PROBLEMS 


ifornia 

mal 

ity 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


PRISON  PROBLEMS 


PROPOUNDED  IN 

PROSE  AND  POETRY 


"Be  not  deceived;  God  is  not  mocked:    for  whatsoever  a 
man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap."    Gal.  6-7. 


"The  thorns  which  I  have  reaped  are  of  the  tree  I  planted 
— they  have  torn  me — and  I  bleed! 

I  should  have  known  what  fruit  would  spring  from  such  a 
seed." — Lord  Byron. 


COMPILED  BY 

FRED  HIGH 

SECOND  EDITION 


PUBLISHED  BY 

THE   PLATFORM 

THE  LYCEUM  AND  CHAUTAUQUA  MAGAZINE 

602  STEINWAY  HALL,  CHICAGO 
1913 


Prison    Problems 


GUARANTORS. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  then  only  a  young-  man,  visited 
New  Orleans,  stood  before  a  slave  market  and  saw 
human  beings  sold  at  public  auction,  took  this  secret 
vow:  "If  ever  I  get  a  chance  to  strike  that  insti- 
tution a  blow,  I  will  do  it."  With  Lincoln's  view 
fresh  in  his  memory  a  gaunt,  callow  youth,  on  his 
first  real  excursion  into  the  big  world  visited  the 
Ohio  State  penitentiary  where  the  sight  of  a  horde 
of  lazy  hirelings  sitting  with  guns  across  their 
knees,  oozing  out  an  existence  as  guards  over  their 
feflowmen  who  slaved  with  down  cast  eyes,  heavy 
hearts  and  fettered  hopes,  not  that  they  might  be 
reformed  half  so  much  as  that  greater  profits  might 
be  piled  up  for  the  contractors  whose  slaves  these 
prisoners  were;  contrasting  the  life  of  the  guards 
and  keepers  with  the  Simon  Legrees  of  slavery 
times,  as  that  youth  left  that  relic  of  the  dark  ages 
he  took  Lincoln's  vow :  "If  I  ever  get  a  chance  to 
strike  that  institution  a  blow,  I'll  do  it." 

This  volume  of  Prison  Problems  was  conceived, 
compiled  and  is  sent  forth  as  an  effort  to  hit  that 
inhuman  prison  policy  that  treats  men  as  criminals 
instead  of  looking  upon  them  as  brothers. 

Being  unable  to  strike  this  blow  alone,  this  vol- 
ume of  Prison  Problems  is  the  co-operated  effort  of 
the  following  persons  who  stood  as  financial  guar- 
antors and  therefore  deserve  the  credit  for  making 
this  effort  possible:  Edmund  Vance  Cooke,  Poet- 
Entertainer,  30  Mayfield  Rd.,  Cleveland,  O. ;  Lou 
J.  Beauchamp,  Humorous-Philosopher,  Hamilton, 


Prison    Problems  3 

Ohio;  H.  \V.  Sears,  The  Taffy  Man,  Waverly,  111.; 
William  Sterling  Battis,  the  Dickens  Imperson- 
ator, 6315  Yale  Avenue,  Chicago,  Illinois; 
J.  E.  Brockway,  Manager,  Redpath-Brockway 
Lyceum  Bureau,  Wabash  Bldg.,  Pittsburg,  Pa. ; 
R.  R.  Hamilton,  Pres.,  National  Lyceum  Associa- 
tion, 122  S.  Michigan  Ave.,  Chicago,  111. ;  Lincoln 
McConnell,  Lecturer,  Thomaston,  Ga. ;  Chas.  W. 
Ferguson,  Pres.  Chautauqua  Managers'  Association, 
630  Orchestra  Bldg.,  Chicago,  111.;  Mrs.  Nora  Mae 
High,  Vocalist,  Waynesburg,  Pa. ;  Ellsworth  Plum- 
stead,  Entertainer,  Birmingham,  Mich. ;  Frank  M. 
Chaffee,  President,  Century  Lyceum  Bureau,  122 
S.  Michigan  Ave.,  Chicago,  111.;  Geo.  P.  Bible,  Lec- 
turer, 5212  Locust  St.,  Philadelphia,  Pa.;  Wm.  A. 
McCormick,  Entertainer,  Onekama,  Mich. ;  B.  F. 
Pratt,  Lecturer,  5126  Highland  Ave.,  Tacoma, 
Wash.;  Wm.  S.  Sadler,  M.  D.,  Chautauqua  Lec- 
turer, 32  N.  State  St.,  Chicago;  Nelson  A.  Jenkins, 
Lyceum  Committeeman,  Conneaut,  Ohio;  Thos. 
Brooks  Fletcher,  Lecturer,  Marion,  Ohio;  Chester 
Birch,  Lecturer-Evangelist,  Winona  Lake,  Ind. ;  A 
L.  Flude,  Manager  Chautauqua  Managers'  Associa- 
tion,-Orchestra  Bldg.,  Chicago;  Margaret  Stahl,  In- 
terpreter, Fremont,  Ohio ;  Robert  Parker  Miles,  1433 
Cordova  St.,  Lakewood,  Ohio ;  Osceola  Pooler, 
Reader,  Tustin,  Mich. ;  J.  F.  Caveny,  4806  Evans 
Ave.,  Chicago;  Henry  Clark,  Lecturer,  Galesburg, 
111. ;  Strickland  W.  Gillilan,  Humorist,  Roland  Park, 
Md. ;  Wm.  I.  Atkinson,  District  Manager  of  the 
Mutual  Lyceum  Bureau,  Clarksville,  Iowa;  I.  N. 
Kuhn,  Lyceum  Patron,  Waynesburg,  Pa. 


2041975 


Prison    Problems 


OUR  PURPOSE. 

Only  such  principles,  fundamental  philosophy 
and  practical  scientific  facts  as  have  been  gathered 
by  men  and  women  of  authority  (with  one  excep- 
tion) have  been  given  a  place  in  this  little  volume. 

There  is  no  attempt  to  make  a  novel ;  neither  is 
it  a  salacious  romance ;  nor  yet  is  it  a  literary 
journey  thru  the  underworld.  It  is  an  attempt  to 
present  crime  and  criminals  as  they  are,  and  since 
the  state  and  the  nation  collectively  and  you  and 
your  neighbor  and  me  and  mine  are  responsible  for 
the  conditions  that  obtain,  then  it  is  only  just  that 
we  set  to  work  to  clean  up  our  part  of  the  appalling 
maelstrom  of  vice,  crime  and  corruption  that  seems 
to  sweep  over  the  land  in  tidal  waves.  Can  we 
justify  our  acts  in  punishing  our  weaker  brothers 
and  sisters  when  much  of  their  weakness  is  the  re- 
sult of  environment  and  the  inexorable  law  of 
heredity  ? 

What  is  at  the  bottom  of  most  crime?  Warden 
Sanders,  of  Fort  Madison,  says  it  is  "booze." 

We,  the  citizens  of  a  Christian  nation,  vote  to  give 
the  saloon-keepers  the  right  to  sell  "booze"  and 
then  in  our  piety  and  self-righteousness  and  morally 
disinfected  spasms  of  virtue  we  are  horrified  and 
cry  for  the  officers  to  pummel  and  punish  the  men 
and  women  who  fall  victims  to  these  very  man- 
traps that  we  helped  to  dig. 

Each  chapter  is  presented  either  as  a  study  in  the 
cause  of  crime  or  as  a  factor  in  the  reformation  of 
criminals.  The  poetic  section  is  a  study  of  the  men- 


Prison    Problems  5 

tal  viewpoint  of  the  man  behind  the  bars ;  it  is  a 
psychological  cameo  of  the  soul  of  the  man  in  the 
iron  cage. 

This  volume  was  compiled  to  create  discussion, 
to  cause  its  readers  to  stop  and  think,  to  create  such 
a  moral  resolve  that  out  of  this  Stygian  night  will 
come  gleams  of  hope  for  a  better  day.  The  prob- 
lems before  us  are  as  old  as  the  human  race;  they 
have  the  power  of  self-generation,  and  even  if  they 
will  be  with  us  until  the  human  race  shall  have  run 
its  course,  and  old  Father  Time  is  asleep  in  the 
abysmal  night  of  oblivion,  you  and  I  must  do  our 
little  mite  towards  bringing  about  a  better  day — 
now — for  our  fellows  who  have  stumbled  on  the 
rough  journey  and  have  stepped  aside  from  the 
straight  and  narrow  path,  where  none  save  the 
Master  has  wralked. 

Study  the  claims  and  assertions  made  by  the 
authors  of  the  various  chapters.  Dispute  their  con- 
clusions, dissect  the  figures  and  p#ss  the  volume  on 
to  your  neighbor  and  out  of  this  will  come  much 
good  that  must  result  in  changed  conditions,  in 
more  humane  treatment,  in  a  search  for  the  cause 
of  crime,  rather  than  the  improved  forms  of  punish- 
ment for  criminals. 

This  little  volume  was  compiled  for  the  single 
purpose  of  creating  public  sentiment  that  must  in- 
spire the  soldiers  of  the  common  good  who  are  now 
engaged  against  such  relics  of  barbarism  as  the 
present  contract  system,  that  indefensible  species 
of  human  slavery  that  must  be  wiped  out  before 
love  can  supplant  hate,  so  that  our  penitentiaries 
shall  cease  to  be  criminal  factories  and  become  re- 
form institutions. 


6  Prison    Problems 

It  is  the  urgent  request  of  the  sponsors  of  this 
volume  that  it  be  not  placed  on  any  book  shelf,  but 
that  it  be  loaned  to  ministers,  editors,  lawyers  and 
educators,  and  thus  be  kept  in  constant  use.  Each 
minister  who  reads  it  is  requested  to  preach  a  ser- 
mon on  some  of  these  mighty  problems. 

Mr.  Editor,  you  are  urged  to  read  this  volume, 
and  then  make  copious  clippings  from  its  pages; 
use  it  as  a  press  sheet,  comment  on  it,  review  its 
contents,  then  urge  your  readers  to  purchase  a  copy 
to  start  on  this  endless  round  of  agitation  and  edu- 
cation that  must  bear  fruit  in  righteous  legislation. 

Above  all,  we  urge  you  noble  women,  who  bless 
every  community  with  your  unselfish  devotion  to 
human  betterment  and  moral  uplift,  to  study  this 
little  volume,  talk  about  it  at  your  clubs,  at  your 
churches  and  in  your  homes.  We  would  further 
ask  that  the  boys  and  girls  in  our  high  schools, 
colleges  and  all  other  educational  institutions  use 
one  of  these  problems  as  a  theme  for  your  essays 
or  orations  and  after  its  delivery  send  it  to  the 
guarantors  of  this  little  volume. 

We  further  ask  each  person  who  sees  a  review, 
news  note,  or  hears  any  mention  made  of  Prison 
Problems,  that  the  facts  be  communicated  to  Fred 
High,  Steinway  Hall,  Chicago,  and  don't  forget  that 
we  are  our  brother's  keeper. 

Maud  Ballington  Booth  says :  "In  the  16  years 
since  the  work  of  the  Salvation  Prison  Reform  was 
started  20,000  men  have  been  released  from  prison 
under  the  Volunteer  Prison  League  guidance.  Dur- 
ing the  time  75,000  have  been  converted  while 
within  the  prison  walls,  and  12,000  have  passed 
thru  the  various  league  homes,  coming  from  prison 


Prison    Problems  1 

to  them  and  from  them  to  the  world  of  men,  re- 
habilitated." 

As  I  stood  before  almost  five  hundred  prisoners 
at  Fort  Madison,  Iowa,  on  Thanksgiving  day,  I 
said :  "Men,  you  probably  think  that  as  I  stand 
here  and  look  into  your  faces,  I  am  wondering 
how  so  many  of  you  got  in  here,  but  I  am  not.  I 
am  wondering  how  on  earth  I  ever  kept  out  of  here 
this  long.  There  is  many  a  true  word  spoken  in  a 
joke." 

The  man  who,  Pouter  Pigeon  like,  struts  around 
the  sanctuary  of  the  Lord  the  most  when  the  people 
are  watching  him,  and  shouts  thief,  thief,  thief  the 
loudest  when  people  are  listening  to  him,  is  gen- 
erally the  cuss  who  is  too  chicken-hearted  to  be  a 
real  crook  and  too  crooked  to  be  even  a  ballyhoo 
orator  for  a  church  raffle. 

This  is  a  queer  world.  Society  will  lie  and  perjure 
its  soul  to  keep  a  wrong-doer  from  going  to  "The 
Pen" ;  but,  after  one  is  there,  that  same  crowd  will 
do  all  in  its  power  to  break  the  spirit,  to  crush 
out  hope,  to  humiliate  the  victim  and  his  friends, 
to  maltreat,  mistreat,  beat  and  bruise  the  poor  un- 
fortunate object  of  its  wrath.  The  slant-eyed  suds 
mongers  of  the  city  of  Boston,  who,  according  to 
Tom  Watson,  "own  fifteen  thousand  white  women, 
whom  they  sell  and  pass  around  among  themselves, 
at  $15  and  $20  apiece,"  receive  more  real  sympathy 
than  our  own  fellowmen  who  are  in  durance  vile. 

The  object  of  all  prison  work  is  twofold,  to  pro- 
tect society  and  to  reform  the  prisoner.  There 
isn't  a  man  or  a  woman  with  the  brain  power  of 
a  maltese  cat  but  who  knows  that  the  past  method 
of  mistreating  prisoners  made  reformation  almost 


8  Prison    Problems 

an  impossibility.  We  judge  institutions  by  results 
just  as  we  judge  individuals,  and  the  results  of  our 
methods  have  been  horribly  bad.  A  righteous  cru- 
sade is  now  being  made  through  the  magazines  and 
public  press  against  the  barbarity  of  prison  meth- 
ods, the  antequated  cruelty  of  the  prison  rules,  and 
the  inhuman  methods  of  (mis)  treating  the  prisoners 
by  those  in  charge.  No  man,  no  race,  ought  to  have 
unlimited  authority  over  any  other  individual  or 
race  of  men.  It  has  always  bred  tyranny,  brutality, 
and  resulted  in  a  rebound  action  that  mentally, 
morally  and  physically  paralyzed  the  person  or  race 
in  authority. 

In  Chicago,  during  two  years,  34  bombs  were 
exploded,  destroying  thousands  of  dollars  worth  of 
property.  Two  brothers  were  tried  for  throwing  a 
bomb ;  three  men  swore  they  all  but  saw  them ; 
one  swore  he  helped  make  the  bomb;  a  jury  set  the 
men  free  because  they  thought  the  witnesses  were 
swearing  falsely,  to  get  the  mammoth  rewards  that 
ran  into  the  thousands.  Could  you  get  three  men 
to  swear  to  a  lie  for  $10,000?  It  is  common  street 
gossip  that  you  can  get  them  here  for  two  dollars 
a  head.  Then,  on  the  other  hand,  can  you  fix  a 
jury?  But  why  go  on?  Can't  we  see  that  the 
chances  for  railroading  a  man  to  "the  Pen"  are 
great,  but  don't  the  records  of  all  institutions  teem 
with  names  of  men  who  have  been  as  much  wronged 
as  they  have  wronged? 

In  this  very  prison  at  Fort  Madison  was  enacted 
a  wrong  that  is  not  without  its  many  parallels.  Back 
in  '61  the  cry  of  war  was  abroad  in  the  land.  The 
president,  in  the  name  of  patriotism,  called  upon 
the  young  men  to  fight,  to  shoot,  to  kill.  A  young 


Prison    Problems  9 

man  enlisted,  he  fought,  he  shot  and  he  killed.  A 
generous  government  paid  him  $13  a  month  for  his 
services ;  after  the  war  the  grateful  people  pensioned 
him.  At  the  front  he  learned  to  kill  in  deliberation 
and  years  afterward  it  was  charged  that  he  killed 
a  man  in  a  fit  of  passion.  He  was  sent  to  Fort 
Madison  for  life  and  his  Christian  friends  asked 
God  to  have  mercy  on  his  soul.  They  had  none. 
After  thirty-one  years  of  service,  the  great  state  of 
Iowa  turned  this  old  veteran  out  of  prison,  and  ac- 
knowledged that  the  state  had  done  him  an  irrepar- 
able wrong.  He  was  pardoned  for  a  crime  that  he 
had  never  committed.  Don't  censure  Iowa;  your 
state  and  my  state  have  done  things  no  doubt  worse. 

In  Maryland,  adultery  is  punished  by  a  fine  of 
$10,  and  in  Iowa  by  three  years'  imprisonment  in 
the  penitentiary.  No  one  in  Maryland  would  think 
of  the  inhuman  sentence  of  three  years  without  the 
privilege  of  speech.  In  most  Pens,  you  are  not  al- 
lowed to  talk.  Men  have  even  lost  the  power  of  con- 
versation. 

When  the  sugar  trust  stole  millions  and  were 
caught,  the  thieves  resigned ;  but  who  ever  heard 
of  the  poor  resigning?  If  a  clerk  in  a  store  stole 
$100,  would  his  resignation  keep  him  out  of  prison? 

I  have  tried  to  make  you  see,  dear  reader,  that 
the  difference  between  the  wrong-doer  who  has  been 
sent  up  and  the  one  who  has  escaped  is  nil.  Now, 
why  all  this  harsh  prejudice  against  the  detained 
offender? 

Fort  Madison  has  inaugurated  a  real  school  sys- 
tem, whereby  prisoners  are  taught  to  read  and  write 
and  the  results  of  this  effort  are  amazing.  Some  day 
attendance  will  be  made  compulsory.  At  present, 


10  Prison    Problems 

the  school  is  a  night  school  only,  for  the  people  of 
Iowa  are  dead  certain  that  they  would  rather  have 
60  cents  from  one  of  the  largest  trusts  in  America 
for  the  man's  work  than  to  realize  that  they  are 
working  to  help  restore  a  weak  brother.  They 
would  rather  send  their  money  to  christianize  the 
poor  Japanese  than  to  spend  it  humanizing  the  in- 
mates of  their  prison.  The  people  of  Iowa  would 
rather  pay  the  trust  $1  for  a  steel  rake  than  to  spend 
$1  to  save  a  human  rake  from  stealing. 

The  historical  and  literary  society  is  a  great, 
growing  and  influential  organization.  The  mem- 
bers did  me  the  honor  to  hold  an  extra  meeting 
Thursday  evening,  when  about  twenty  of  us  met  in 
a  large  cell,  without  a  guard  or  an  attendant,  and 
spent  what  to  me  was  one  of  the  happiest  and  most 
profitable  two  hours  that  I  have  spent  for  months. 
Three  papers  were  read,  one  on  "Reading  as  a 
Habit,"  "The  Editor  as  a  Political  Boss,"  and  "A 
Sketch  of  France,"  and  so  well  prepared,  well- 
written  and  informing  were  these  papers  that  it  was 
more  a  reminder  of  college  days  than  of  prison 
bars. 

One  of  the  reforms  that  all  of  this  discussion  has 
brought  about  is  to  substitute  a  service  of  hope, 
of  faith,  of  good  cheer  for  the  old,  whining  harangue 
on  retribution.  The  rehashing  of  the  husks  that  a 
certain  gentleman  used  in  lieu  of  a  bundle  of  shred- 
ded wheat  biscuits,  and  when  his  fodder  gave  out  re- 
turned to  where  the  fatted  calf  had  been  patiently 
waiting  for  almost  ten  years  to  be  slaughtered  in 
honor  of  the  spendthrift's  return. 

A  word  to  preachers,  lecturers  and  singers :  Don't 
expect  an  encore  on  "Where  Is  My  Wandering  Boy 


Prison    Problems  11 

Tonight."  Common  sense  will  teach  you  that  he 
sits  right  in  front  of  you,  and  that  he  is  not  doing 
much  wandering,  either.  That  bunch  of  crooks 
know  they  are  guilty,  if  they  are  guilty.  Then,  why 
appeal  to  them  to  arise  and  go  to  their  father's 
house?  Don't  you  know  that  the  ordinary  warden 
won't  allow  them  to  go? 

Now  is  the  time  to  plead  for  the  new  idea,  for 
the  advance  movement.  The  lyceum  is  honored  by 
the  work  that  Mrs.  Booth  is  doing.  Mrs.  Maybrick 
deserves  great  credit  for  her  efforts.  Caleb  Powers 
did  a  wise  thing  when  he  rushed  to  the  platform, 
and  Cole  Younger  showed  good  sense  in  hiking  for 
the  rostrum  instead  of  the  dime  museum. 

As  a  profession,  are  we  pleading  for  humane  treat- 
ment for  those  on  the  inside  of  prison  walls  as  we 
plead  for  the  brotherhood  of  man  for  all  on  the  out- 
side? 

Isn't  it  worth  our  while  to  try  and  help  solve  this 
problem?  In  Chicago  last  year  there  were  202  kill- 
ings. In  Canada  there  were  12  murders  for  every 
million  population.  Last  year  there  were  103  execu- 
tions in  the  United  States  for  9,000  murders.  It  is 
claimed  by  those  who  ought  to  know  that  the 
chances  are  four  to  one  that  even  our  worst 
criminals  will  not  be  apprehended  in  the  United 
States.  The  chances  are  ten  to  one  that  they  will 
never  be  convicted  and  twenty  to  one  that  they  will 
never  go  to  the  penitentiary. 

What  is  needed  is  not  less  punishment,  but  that  it 
will  be  distributed  a  little  more  in  accordance  with 
the  square-deal  principle. 


12  Prison    Problems 

THE  PSYCHIC  POWER  OF  MUSIC. 

By  H.  Addington  Bruce. 

Belief  in  the  efficacy  of  music  as  an  adjunct 
in  the  treatment  of  diseases  is  literally  as  old  as 
antiquity.  At  least  one  reference  to  it  is  found  in 
the  Bible,  in  the  episode  of  David  curing  Saul  of 
melancholia  by  his  skill  as  a  musician.  The  ancient 
Greeks  and  Romans  were  enthusiastic  advocates 
of  "musical  medicine"  as  a  remedy  for  all  sorts  of 
maladies.  Thus,  Aulus  Agellus  particularly  ex- 
tolled the  music  of  the  flute  as  a  cure  for  sciatica, 
an  opinion  which  Democritus  also  voiced ;  while 
Pythagoras  is  credited  with  having  composed  "cer- 
tain divine  mixtures  of  'diatonic,  enharmonic,  and 
chromatic  melodies,  which  were  designed  as  anti- 
dotes to  moods." 

But  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  medical  profession 
as  a  whole  has  paid  much  attention,  until  quite  re- 
cently, to  the  views  advanced  by  the  ancients;  or 
to  the  hints  thrown  out  by  individual  physicians, 
who,  as  a  result  of  personal  experience,  have  be- 
come convinced  that  music  has  a  therapeutic  value. 
In  only  one  field,  the  treatment  of  mental  disease, 
is  it  today  utilized  to  any  extent,  and  there  mainly 
in  the  way  of  asylum  concerts  and  dances,  and  as  an 
ameliorative,  rather  than  a  curative,  measure. 
Lately,  however,  as  evidenced  by  the  tone  of  edi- 
torial articles  in  leading  medical  journals,  both  in 
this  country  and  abroad,  there  have  been  signs  of 
a  rapidly  growing  interest  in  the  subject  and  an 


Prison    Problems  13 

unwonted  readiness  to  investigate  it.  Undoubtedly 
this  is  due,  in  the  main,  to  the  amazing  discoveries 
that  modern  psychology  has  made  with  regard  to 
the  influence  of  the  mind  on  the  health  of  the  body. 

It  is  not  known,  to  mention  one  discovery  of  espe- 
cial importance  in  connection  with  the  problem  of 
the  healing  power  of  music,  that  the  state  of  one's 
thoughts  and  emotions  exercises  an  appreciable  ef- 
fect in  the  circulation,  the  digestion,  the  respiration, 
and,  in  short,  the  functioning  of  every  bodily  organ. 

The  distinguished  Italian  scientist,  Angelo  Mosso, 
placed  several  of  his  colleagues  and  students,  one 
after  another,  on  an  apparatus  constructed  in  such  a 
way  that  the  body  of  a  man  could  be  balanced  on  it 
in  a  horizontal  position.  Its  mechanism  was  so 
sensitive  that  it  oscillated  according  to  the  rhythm 
of  the  subject's  breathing.  Commenting  on  the  re- 
sults of  the  experiments,  Professor  Mosso  said : 

"If  one  spoke  to  a  person  while  he  was  lying  on 
the  balance,  in  equilibrium  and  perfectly  quiet,  it 
inclined  immediately  towards  the  head.  The  legs 
became  lighter  and  the  head  heavier.  This  phe- 
nomenon was  constant,  whatever  pains  the  subject 
took  not  to  move,  however  he  endeavored  not  to 
to  speak,  to  do  nothing  which  might  produce  a  more 
copious  flow  of  blood  to  the  head." 

Even  in  sleep  the  same  phenomenon  was  evident : 

"When  all  was  quiet,  one  of  us  would  inten- 
tionally make  a  slight  noise  by  coughing,  scraping 
a  foot  on  the  ground,  or  moving  a  chair;  and  at 
once  the  balance  inclined  again  towards  the  head, 
remaining  immovable  for  four  or  five  minutes,  with- 
out the  subject's  noticing  anything  or  waking. 


14  Prison    Problems 

*  *  *  It  proved  by  this  balance  that  at  the 
slightest  emotion,  the  blood  rushes  to  the  head." 

Following  up  these  experiments,  Dr.  William  G. 
Anderson,  using  a  similar  apparatus,  and  selecting 
as  subjects  a  group  of  Yale  students,  proved  that  the 
blood  could  be  sent  to  the  legs  by  merely  concentrat- 
ing the  attention  and  thinking  of  moving  them,  but 
without  executing  any  actual  movement.  The  same 
motor  influence  of  thought  and  emotion  on  different 
organs  of  the  body  has  been  demonstrated  by  other 
competent  investigators  with  the  aid  of  various 
scientific  instruments,  by  which  the  effect  of  mental 
states  on  the  action  of  the  heart,  lungs,  muscles,  etc., 
has  been  studied  with  the  most  delicate  precision. 
The  results  of  their  researches  are  conclusive 
enough  to  justify  Professor  James's  emphatic  asser- 
tion: 

"All  mental  states  (no  matter  what  their  char- 
acter as  regards  utility)  are  followed  by  bodily  ac- 
tivity of  some  sort.  They  lead  to  inconspicuous 
changes  in  breathing,  circulation,  general  muscular 
tension,  and  glandular  or  other  visceral  activity, 
even  if  they  do  not  lead  to  conspicuous  movements 
of  the  muscles  of  voluntary  life.  *  *  *  All  states 
of  mind,  even  mere  thoughts  and  feelings,  are  motor 
in  their  consequences." 

Experiment  has  further  proved  that  pleasurable 
mental  states  have  a  distinct  tonic  value  to  the  whole 
organism,  while  mental  states  that  are  disagree- 
able have  a  weakening  effect.  Accordingly,  every- 
thing that  tends  to  expel  "discordant"  thoughts,  to 
allay  worry,  anxiety,  grief,  anger,  fretfulness,  de- 
spair; replacing  them  with  mental  states  of  con- 
tentment, hope,  .peace,  happiness,  courage,  must  be 


Prison    Problems  15 

of  medicinal  usefulness.  It  is  this  that,  in  the  last 
analysis,  accounts  for  the  success  of  all  "faith  heal- 
ing" systems,  so  far  as  they  are  successful ;  and  it 
is  this  that  warrants  the  utilization  of  music  as  a 
weapon  in  the  warfare  against  disease. 

Beyond  the  slightest  doubt,  there  is  none  other  of 
the  arts  that  so  strongly  appeals  to  the  emotional 
side  of  man.  In  some  measure  everybody  has  ex- 
perienced, and  will  readily  acknowledge,  music's 
unique  suggestive  force  in  conveying  ideas  and  feel- 
ings, creating  moods,  and  impelling  to  action.  Who 
of  us  can  listen  unmoved  to  the  plaintive  sweetness 
of  "Home,  Sweet  Home,"  or  has  not  felt  the  blood 
pulse  faster  at  "Dixie's"  exhilarating  strains?  It 
is  not  hard  to  understand  the  magic  in  the  Finale  of 
Beethovan's  "Fifth  Symphony"  that  caused  the 
Napoleonic  veteran  to  leap  to  his  feet  in  the  crowd- 
ed concert  hall,  with  the  cry  :  "The  Emperor !"  Nor 
can  we  wonder  that,  during  the  wars  of  the  French 
Revolution,  it  was  forbidden,  on  pain  of  death,  to 
play  the  "Ranz  des  Vaches"  in  the  hearing  of  the 
Swiss  soldiers,  as  it  was  found  that  the  familiar 
melody  inspired  them  with  such  an  intense  longing 
for  home  that  they  were  deserting  by  hundreds. 

For  that  matter,  experimental  evidence  has  been 
obtained  demonstrating  that  music  "suggests"  men- 
tal states  of  great  emotional  significance,  and  that 
through  these  it  acts  powerfully  on  the  physical  or- 
ganism. 

Obviously,  if  music  is  helpful  in  time  of  illness, 
by  virtue  of  its  power  to  influence  the  body  thru 
the  mind,  setting  in  motion  those  healing  forces 
latent  in  all  of  us,  it  is  still  more  useful  from  a  pre- 
ventive and  hygienic  point  of  view.  It  is  valuable 


16  Prison    Problems 

not  simply  as  an  aid  to  health,  but  as  a  powerful 
auxiliary  in  the  development  of  intellect  and  char- 
acter. The  ancient  Greeks  considered  the  study 
of  music  indispensable  to  a  proper  education. 

Today,  in  our  schools,  music  is  gaining  increas- 
ing recognition  as  an  educational  force.  It  still  is 
absent  from  too  many  homes.  Yet  it  is  incompara- 
bly more  needed  in  the  home  than  in  the  school- 
room, because  it  is  there  that  its  great  suggestive 
power  may  make  itself  most  surely  felt,  to  aid  in 
right  thinking  and  right  living.  And  nowadays, 
since  the  invention  of  "player-pianos,"  and  "talk- 
ing machines,"  even  those  devoid  of  musical  skill 
can  command  in  their  homes  all  the  music  they 
wish,  and  draw  at  will  on  its  wondrous  resources 
as  a  giver  of  pleasure  and  an  energizer  of  the  body 
and  the  mind. 


Prison    Problems  17 

THE  AMERICAN  COMMON  SCHOOL. 

By  Rt.  Rev.  Samuel  Fallows,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. 

A  sermon  delivered  at  the  request  of  the  Na- 
tional Educational  Association  at  its  recent  conven- 
tion in  Chicago. 

"John  Stuart  Mill  once  claimed  that  it  would  be 
well  to  question  an  axiom  so  that  the  truth  con- 
tained in  it  might  be  the  more  clearly  seen.  It 
would  seem  like  arraigning  an  axiom  in  the  educa- 
tional world  to  call  in  question  the  value  of  a  broad, 
liberal  public  school  system  to  the  people  of  the 
United  States.  Yet  it  has  been  done  and  is  still  be- 
ing done.  Richard  Grant  White  fiercely  attacked 
the  public  schools  a  few  years  ago  in  the  North 
American  Review,  calling  them  a  failure.  Benjamin 
Reece  followed  in  the  same  track  still  later  in  an 
article  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly.  More  re- 
cently Rebecca  Harding  Davis  took  up  the  same 
strain  in  a  contribution  to  the  North  American  Re- 
view. 

"Mr.  White  maintained  that  'our  large  towns 
swarm  with  idle,  vicious  lads  and  young  men  with- 
out visible  means  of  support.  Our  rural  districts 
are  infested  with  tramps,  a  species  of  the  genus 
homo,  unknown  to  our  forefathers.  Our  legisla- 
tures are  corrupt,  our  great  corporations  buy  them 
up  at  will.  The  dominant  political  parties  are 
guilty  of  bribery  at  elections.  The  judges  on  the 
bench  have  notably  declined  in  learning,  wisdom  and 
integrity.  Dishonesty  in  business  and  betrayal  of 


18  Prison    Problems 

trust  are  matters  of  common  shame.  Politics  have 
been  largely  handed  over  to  the  inferior  men  of  love 
of  cunning.  Divorces  have  fearfully  multiplied 
Filial  respect  has  diminished;  our  young  men  and 
young  women  have  lost  their  modesty  and  ceased 
to  blush  for  the  loss. 

"  'Crime  and  vice  have  increased  year  after  year, 
corresponding  almost  exactly  to  the  development 
of  the  common  school  system.  It  has  given  us  also 
a  nondescript  and  hybrid  class,  unfitted  for  pro- 
fessional or  mercantile  life,  unwilling  and  also  un- 
able to  be  farmers  and  artisans  and  who  have  left 
both  skilled  and  unskilled  labor  to  be  performed 
by  immigrant  foreigners.' 

"The  arguments  affirming  that  our  common 
schools  are  the  cause  of  crime,  are  fallacious  through 
and  through.  From  the  statistics  carefully  gathered 
by  the  bureau  of  education  and  revealed  in  the 
history  of  our  reformatories  and  penal  institutions, 
we  learn  that  one-fifth  of  all  criminals  are  totally 
uneducated  and  that  the  other  four-fifths  are  practi- 
cally uneducated.  We  also  learn  that  the  propor- 
tion of  criminals  from  the  illiterate  classes  is  eight- 
fold as  great  as  the  proportion  from  those  having 
some  education ;  and  in  proportion  to  the  higher 
education  received  in  our  own  country  does  crimi- 
nality decrease. 

"The  following  statements  prove  this:  Out  of  a 
population  of  2,616  convicts,  in  the  prisons  of  Au- 
burn and  Sing  Sing,  19  were  returned  as  collegiates, 
10  as  having  received  a  classical  and  78  academic 
instruction — 4  per  cent  of  the  entire  population. 
Years  ago  the  commissioner  of  education  gathered 
statistics  from  seventeen  of  the  middle  and  western 


Prison    Problems  19 

states,  bearing  upon  this  point.  These  states  re- 
ported 110,538  prisoners.  Of  this  number  25  per 
cent  were  illiterate.  The  average  illiteracy  of  the 
population  of  these  states  was  4  per  cent.  There- 
fore this  4  per  cent  furnished  25  per  cent  of  the 
criminals  and  the  96  per  cent  who  could  read  and 
write  furnished  only  75  per  cent.  Thus  1,000  il- 
literates furnished  on  the  average  eight  times  as 
many  prisoners  as  the  same  number  who  could  read 
and  write. 

"The  causes  of  crime  are  not  education  or  the 
common  school,  but  unfortunate  ante-natal  condi- 
tions, bad  homes,  unhealthy  infancy  and  childhood, 
over-crowded  slums,  promiscuous  herding  together, 
industrial  and  social  injustice  and  intemperances. 

"I  put  emphasis  on  bad  homes  as  the  chief  cause 
of  crime.  The  statistics  of  every  reformatory  show 
that  the  great  majority  of  inmates  come  from  this 
class  of  homes.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  work  of 
the  teacher  is  hindered  when  pupils,  however  well 
trained,  are  subjected  continually  to  the  malign 
influence  of  evil  home  surroundings. 

"It  must  be  remembered  that  the  average  school 
attendance  is  scarcely  five  years.  It  is  not  far  from 
the  real  facts  in  the  case  to  say  that  the  average  at- 
tendance at  school  the  country  through,  of  each 
boy,  is  not  much  more  than  five  months  in  the  year 
— we  may  count  it  six  months.  The  entire  school- 
ing of  the  average  boy  would  be  comprised,  there- 
fore, within  thirty  months  or  120  weeks,  or  about 
600  school  days.  Reckoning  six  hours  for  a  school 
day,  the  boy  would  be  under  direct  school  influ- 
ence 3,600  hours.  During  that  period  he  is  within 
the  influence  of  the  home  directly  or  indirectly,  60 


20  •  Prison    Problems 

months,  or  1,800  days,  or  43,200  hours.  Deducting 
the  3,600  hours  the  boy  is  at  school,  leaves  39,600 
hours.  The  school  ratio,  therefore,  to  the  home  is 
one  to  eleven. 

"This,  remember,  is  the  ratio  for  the  average 
American  boy's  school  instruction.  When  the  in- 
mates of  our  reformatories  are  considered  with  re- 
lation to  the  number  of  actual  days  or  hours  in  at- 
tendance upon  school,  as  evidenced  by  the  low  grade 
they  have  attained  before  entrance  into  these  insti- 
tutions, the  ratio  of  their  school  hours  to  the  home 
hours  will  be  1  to  22 — that  is,  for  1,800  hours  spent 
in  school  39,600  hours  will  be  those  for  which  the 
home  is  responsible. 

"Bonjean  says:  'We  cannot  sterilize  with  the 
bouillon  of  culture  the  microbes  of  vice  and  crime 
except  by  wholesale  parental  correction.' 

"With  regard  to  the  direct  influence  of  our  Amer- 
ican system,  I  unhesitatingly  aver  from  a  long  and 
wide  personal  and  official  connection  with  it,  that 
the  spirit  of  the  requirements  of  the  Massachusetts 
system  of  education  is  observed  by  the  440,000 
teachers  of  our  public  schools.  These  requirements 
make  it  obligatory  'that  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  all 
instructors  of  youth  to  exert  their  best  endeavors 
to  impress  on  the  minds  of  children  committed  to 
their  care  and  instruction  the  principles  of  piety, 
justice  and  sacred  regard  for  truth,  love  of  their 
country,  humanity  and  universal  benevolence,  so- 
briety, industry  and  frugality,  chastity,  moderation 
and  temperance,  and  those  other  virtues  which  are 
the  ornaments  of  human  society  and  the  basis  upon 
which  a  republican  constitution  is  founded. 

"How  can  such  schools  foster  crime?     How  can 


Prison    Problems  21 

they  be  godless  with  the  inculcation  and  exemplifi- 
cation of  these  foundation  principles  of  a  godly 
character? 

"I  have  earnestly  claimed  for  many  years,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  in  some  of  the  states  of  the  Union 
the  Bible  has  been  excluded  from  the  schoolroom, 
the  schools  are  not  therefore  godless  institutions. 
Mrs.  Ella  Flagg  Young,  our  excellent  city  superin- 
tendent of  education,  has  just  affirmed  the  same 
great  fact.  I  again  emphatically  affirm  that  our 
schools  are  not  godless.  Sectarian  instruction  never 
can  be  given  in  them.  Forever  must  we  keep 
separate  in  every  phase  and  form  the  American 
church  from  the  American  state.  The  American 
church  is  diversified,  as  its  more  than  forty  distinct 
denominations  indicate.  The  American  Sunday 
school,  embracing  the  children  of  these  various  re- 
ligious organizations  is  to  supplant  the  work  of 
the  common  schools  by  giving  specific  religious  in- 
struction one  day  in  seven. 

"Almost  as  many  children  as  are  embraced  in  our 
public  and  parochial  schools  are  to  be  found  in  our 
Sunday  school  classes.  This  fact  must  never  be 
lost  sight  of  when  we  are  considering  the  subject 
of  American  education ;  whether  the  reading  of  the 
Bible  by  the  teachers  in  our  day  schools  shall  be 
permitted,  we  ail  know  is  a  seriously  mooted  ques- 
tion. The  book  of  books  in  its  entirety  has  been 
held  to  be  in  a  broad  sense  a  sectarian  book  by  some 
of  our  state  supreme  courts.  It  has  not  so  been  held 
by  supreme  courts  in  other  states.  It  is  not  so  held, 
I  believe,  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States. 

"The  solution  of  the  difficulty  presented  by  the 


22  Prison    Problems 

decisions  of  these  differing  courts  would  seem  to  be 
that  of  the  Wisconsin  Supreme  Court,  which  holds 
that  selections  from  the  Bible,  which  teach  the 
fundamentally  religious  and  moral  truths  that  are 
believed  by  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  and  on  which  rests  the  very 
super-structure  of  our  American  civilization,  may 
be  read  in  the  schools  of  that  progressive  state. 

"Such  selections  were  made  some  time  ago  in 
our  city  by  the  leading  representatives  of  the  Roman 
Catholic,  the  Jewish  and  the  various  Protestant 
churches  for  use  in  the  Chicago  schools.  For  some 
reason,  which  I  could  not  learn,  they  were  not  per- 
mitted to  be  read  by  the  board  of  education  then 
in  office.  It  seems  incredible  that  an  indignity 
should  be  put  on  this  supreme  book,  which  is  put 
upon  no  other  commanding  book  in  the  world's  liter- 
ature, by  denying  even  the  reading  of  these  selec- 
tions, which  lie  at  the  very  heart  of  all  human  prog- 
ress to  our  school  children.  May  we  not  hope  for 
a  speedy  wiping  out  of  this  shameful  anomaly  in 
our  educational  instruction? 

"As  to  the  statement  which  has  been  made  that 
'the  public  schools  turn  out  bad  citizens,'  I  utterly 
deny  it,  as  a  general  proposition,  but  I  do  freely  ad- 
mit that  they  sometimes  do  turn  out  some  bad  citi- 
zens, both  literally  and  metaphorically,  just  as  the 
churches  sometimes  turn  out  some  bad  saints. 

"But  can  any  sane  or  well-informed  person  make 
the  above  sweeping  assertion?  Sound  the  roll  call 
of  the  most  illustrious  dead  of  the  American  re- 
public and  summon  those  who  are  living  to  answer. 
Let  the  scores  of  millions  of  the  best  men  and  wo- 
men the  world  has  ever  contained,  living  or  dead, 


Prison    Problems  33 

stand  up  with  them,  multitudes  whose  names  are  un- 
known, but  who  have  wrought  their  lives  into  our 
nation's  glorious  structure,  since  the  first  rude 
common  school  house  was  erected  on  the  wild 
New  England  shore. 

"With  equal  reason  can  you  charge  religion  it- 
self with  being  the  cause  of  crime  as  education  in 
the  common  school?  The  indictments  against  the 
school  are  really  indictments  against  the  churches. 
How  is  it  possible  to  believe  that  the  conditions 
of  things  so  lugubriously  depicted  by  Richard  Grant 
White  can  be  the  result  of  common  school  instruc- 
tion without  believing  that  the  thousands  of  clergy- 
men and  millions  of  communicants  in  the  vari- 
ous churches  and  the  thousands  of  teachers  and 
millions  of  scholars  in  the  Sunday  schools,  almost 
equaling  those  in  the  common  schools  are  just  as 
much  to  blame? 

"Religion  is  a  failure  if  the  common  school  is  JL 
failure.  Neither  is  a  failure.  Of  course,  it  goes 
without  saying  that  it  is  not  because  of  but  in  spite 
of  the  common  school  and  of  religion  that  crime 
prevails. 

"The  grandest  school  of  democracy  is  the  common 
school.  It  is  the  main  unifier  of  the  forty-five  or 
more  nationalities  with  their  sub-divisions  that  have 
been  and  still  are  crowding  our  shores. 

"The  night  schools  of  Chicago  tell  an  eloquent 
story  to  illustrate  my  statement.  Nearly  15,000  are 
now  in  attendance  and  there  was  almost  a  riot  in  one 
of  them  not  long  ago  because  of  the  crush  of  scholars 
to  get  in.  In  another  of  these  schools  sixteen  dis- 
tinct nationalities  were  represented. 

"Why  this  crush?  Why  this  commingling?  Were 


24  Prison    Problems 

these  criminals  that  were  struggling  to  gain  admis- 
sion? Were  they  rushing  to  be  made  criminals? 
Were  the  self-sacrificing  teachers  that  met  them 
with  a  welcome  on  face  and  lips  and  with  patience 
almost  infinite  in  their  hearts,  a  band  of  conscious 
or  unconscious  criminal  makers?  I  need  not  say 
No.  To  make  law-abiding,  useful,  honored  Amer- 
ican citizens  is  the  aim  of  all  this  effort  and  it  is 
accomplishing  the  end  desired. 

"The  common  school  is  the  great  leveler,  but  it 
levels  up  and  not  down.  It  practically  enforces 
equality  and  fraternity.  Sharp  angles  are  knocked 
off,  differences  are  rubbed  down,  class  distinctions 
are  prevented,  caste  is  abolished.  The  rich  man's 
son  and  the  poor  man's  son  meet  together.  Brains 
and  not  money  weigh  in  the  scale  of  scholarships. 
Merit  and  not  the  father's  position  sends  the  boy  to 
the  head  of  his  class. 

"Religious  animosity  finds  no  fuel  to  feed  it. 
Nationality  sees  no  barrier  raised  against  it.  The 
young  'know  nothings'  speedily  become  'know 
somethings,'  and  they  are  not  apt  to  forget  the  fact 
in  their  future  political  life. 

"The  common  school  requires  of  the  pupil  an 
arithmetical,  geographical  or  grammatical  reason 
for  the  hope  that  is  in  him.  His  life  afterwards  is  a 
series  of  interrogation  points.  He  carries  the  habit 
of  asking  a  reason  in  his  dealings  with  all  subjects, 
with  all  measures,  and  with  all  men. 

"The  Mosley  commission  made  its  report  some 
time  ago  to  the  nation  and  the  world.  You  will  re- 
call its  origin.  On  account  of  the  success  of  the 
engineers  of  the  United  States,  Mr.  Mosley  met  in 
South  Africa,  he  desired  to  see  'what  sort  of  coun- 


Prison    Problems  25 

try  it  was  that  was  responsible  for  sending  so  many 
level-headed  men  to  the  Cape.'  He  said :  'So  far 
as  I  was  able  to  ascertain,  the  form  of  education 
given  in  the  United  States  was  responsible  for  much 
of  its  success,  and  I  returned  home,  determined, 
if  possible,  to  get  together  a  party  of  experts  to  visit 
the  country  and  test  the  soundness  of  my  con- 
clusions.' 

"He  succeeded  in  his  effort,  and  a  superb  body  of 
men,  representing  the  cause  of  British  education  in 
all  its  various  features,  was  organized  into  a  com- 
mission to  investigate  the  relations  between  educa- 
tion and  commercial  and  industrial  efficiency,  or 
phrased  differently,  'to  find  out  the  educational 
causes  and  conditions  which  have  contributed  to 
the  rapid  industrial  development  of  the  United 
States.' 

"In  this  report  Mr.  Mosely  sums  up  his  reflec- 
tions upon  our  general  educational  system  as  fol- 
lows :  'My  observation  leads  me  to  believe  that 
the  average  American  boy,  when  he  leaves  school, 
is  infinitely  better  fitted  for  his  vocation  and  strug- 
gle in  life  than  the  English  boy.  And,  in  conse- 
quence, there  are  in  the  United  States  a  smaller  pro- 
portion of  "failures"  and  fewer  who  slide  down  hill, 
and  eventually  join  the  pauper,  criminal,  or  "sub- 
merged tenth"  class.' 

"Dr.  Harris,  in  referring  to  that  portion  of  the 
report  bearing  upon  the  manual  and  industrial 
schools  of  the  nation  and  upon  its  industrial  condi- 
tion, justly  states  'that  the  American  boy  is  fitted 
by  the  general  course  of  the  common  school  for  a 
successful  directorship  of  machinery.  The  gradu- 
ate of  the  elementary  school  is  well  fitted  by  alert- 
ness and  versatility  to  direct  or  "tend"  the  machine 


26  Prison    Problems 

in  the  textile  manufactory,  or  in  the  machine  shop 
or  in  agriculture.' 

"He  further  says :  'If  we  remember  that  the 
manual  training  school  does  not  cultivate  alertness, 
versatility,  and  the  power  of  attention,  any  more 
than,  if  quite  as  much  as,  the  ordinary  studies  of 
the  schools  in  arithmetic,  algebra,  geometry,  "nat- 
ural philosophy"  or  physics,  not  to  mention  gram- 
mar, and  other  language  studies,  we  shall  not  be 
surprised  that  in  our  country,  where  industrial  ma- 
chinery of  every  kind  is  almost  universally  used, 
the  American  laborer  is  found  to  be  possessed  of 
note-worthy  skill  and  ability  to  turn  out  a  large 
amount  of  product,  and  that  he  is  able  to  adjust 
himself  to  new  situations,  for  the  common  school 
curricula  give  exactly  the  best  training  for  this.' 

"The  American  public  school  is  not  perfect  by 
any  means,  but  with  all  its  imperfections  it  is  the 
best  system  in  the  nation  and  for  the  nation  that 
has  been  yet  devised. 

"The  spiritual  training  of  our  children  must  be 
left  to  the  church,  as  I  have  claimed.  The  state 
must  not  usurp  the  function  of  the  church  in  any 
particular.  The  church  must  see  that  every  child, 
so  far  as  possible,  shall  receive  a  distinct  religious 
education,  and  thus  use  this  potent  agency  for  the 
prevention  of  crime. 

"The  months  of  common  school  education  must 
be  increased  each  year  from  six  to  nine  or  ten,  and 
the  years  from  five  to  seven  or  eight.  Teachers 
must  be  better  trained  and  better  paid.  Parents 
must  come  into  closer  relationship  with  the  school- 
room. Then  will  come  the  golden  age  of  the  public 
school,  and  with  it  the  golden  age  of  the  church 
also.  The  millennium  will  then  dawn  upon  us." 


Prison    Problems  27 


WHAT  BELITTLES  A  WOMAN 
SOCIALLY. 

By  Ida  M.  Tarbell. 

"No  other  honest  work  in  the  country  so  belittles 
a  woman  socially  as  housework  performed  for 
money.  It  is  the  only  field  of  labor  which  has 
scarcely  felt  the  touch  of  the  modern  labor  move- 
ment ;  the  only  one  where  the  hours,  conditions  and 
wages  are  not  being  attacked  generally;  the  only 
one  in  which  there  is  no  organization  or  standardiza- 
tion, no  training,  no  regular  road  of  progress.  It  is 
the  only  field  of  labor  in  which  there  seems  to  be  a 
general  tendency  to  abandon  the  democratic  notion 
and  return  frankly  to  the  standards  of  the  old  aris- 
tocratic regime.  The  multiplication  of  livery,  the 
tipping  system,  the  terms  of  address,  all  show  an  in- 
creasing imitation  of  the  old  world's  methods.  Un- 
happily enough  they  are  used  with  little  or  none  of 
the  old  world's  ease.  Being  imitations  and  not 
natural  growths,  they,  of  course,  cannot  be. 

"More  serious  still  is  the  relation  which  has  been 
shown  to  exist  between  criminality  and  household 
occupations.  Nothing  indeed  which  recent  investi- 
gation has  established  ought  to  startle  the  Ameri- 
can woman  more.  Contrary  to  public  opinion  it  is 
not  the  factory  and  shop  which  are  making  women 
offenders  of  all  kinds ;  it  is  the  household.  In  a 
recent  careful  study  of  over  3,000  women  criminals, 
the  Bureau  of  Labor  found  80  per  cent  came  direct- 
ly from  their  own  homes  or  from  the  traditional 
pursuits  of  women !" 


28  Prison    Problems 

The  ordinary  servant  girl  in  the  home  knows  that 
the  standards  and  conditions  of  her  work  are  a  mat- 
ter of  chance ;  that,  while  she  may  receive  con- 
siderate treatment  in  one  place,  in  another  there  will 
be  no  apparent  consciousness  that  she  is  a  human 
being.  She  knows  and  dreads  the  loneliness  of  the 
average  "place."  "It's  breaking  my  heart  here,5' 
sobbed  an  intelligent  Irish  girl,  serving  a  term  for 
drunkenness  begun  in  the  kitchen,  "alone  all  day 
long  with  never  a  one  to  pass  a  good  word."  She 
finds  herself  cut  off  from  most  of  the  benefits  which 
are  provided  for  other  wage-earning  girls.  She  finds 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association — in  some 
quarters  if  not  everywhere — closes  its  rooms  and 
classes  to  her.  She  finds  the  girls'  clubhouses  gen- 
erally are  closed  to  her.  She  is  the  pariah  among 
workers. 


Prison    Problems  29 


THE  EFFECTS  OF  ALCOHOL. 

By  Dr.  Max  Thorek. 

Official    W.    R.    A.    U.    Physician    and    Surgeon-in-Chief   American    Hos- 
pital,  Consultant  Cook  County  Hospital. 

Reprint  from  The  Player,  the  Actor's  Magazine. 

A  great  deal  of  discussion  has  for  some  time  been 
going  on  in  scientific  as  well  as  in  lay  circles  with 
reference  to  the  effects  of  stimulants  on  the  system. 
Society  seems  to  be  divided  into  two  classes,  one 
of  which  decries  the  use  of  stimulants  in  any  form 
and  are  waging  war  by  organizing  temperance  so- 
cieties and  even  build  hospitals  in  which  not  a  drop 
of  alcohol  is  permitted  for  the  treatment  of  the 
sick  or  for  any  other  purpose.  (Frances  Willard 
hospital,  Chicago.) 

The  first  effects  noted  when  drinking  beverages 
containing  alcohol  are  the  following:  There  is  a 
short,  temporary  period  of  exhilaration,  you  feel 
good,  you  become  "a  good  fellow,"  and  when  taken 
more  and  more  you  will  begin  to  feel  sleepy.  This 
may  gradually  terminate  in  actual  loss  of  conscious- 
ness. You  are  taken  home.  Then  follows  the  stage 
of  depression  or  the  well-known  "Katzenjammer." 

If  taken  in  small  quantities  it  is  a  heart  tonic,  in 
large  doses  it  is  a  heart  depressant.  A  drink  of 
liquor  makes  the  breathing  freer  and  fuller,  an  over- 
dose weakens  the  respirations  and  you  will  often 
hear  drunken  men  exclaim  that  they  cannot  get 
their  breath.  This  means  that  the  center  of  respira- 
tion in  the  brain  is  being  poisoned. 

The   working  man   who   rushes   his   pail   to   the 


30  Prison    Problems 

corner  saloon  for  alcoholic  beverages,  in  the  belief 
that  it  is  a  food  and  substitutes  other  foodstuffs  is 
digging  his  own  grave.  He  is  nursing  the  cumula- 
tive effect  of  a  deadly  poision  and  from  the  point 
of  cost  it  has  been  calculated  to  be  eight  times 
more  expensive  than  bread.  As  a  food  alcohol  in 
any  form  is,  therefore,  an  absolute  failure. 

There  is  nothing  more  degrading,  there  is  noth- 
ing that  converts  the  best  of  men  to  beasts  than 
excessive  drink.  It  is  early  in  life  that  the  habit  may 
be  easily  acquired.  Those  who  yield  to  its  seduc- 
tions and  become  its  slaves  are  usually  weakened 
either  from  inheritance  or  from  some  cause  and  it 
i?  in  these  neuropathic  individuals  that  it  works 
its  ravages. 

For  some  reason  or  other,  illness,  disappointment 
in  business  or  love,  worry  over  domestic  felicity, 
financial  reverses  and  the  like  cause  the  individual 
to  feel  an  irresistible  (?)  craving  for  assistance  in 
the  struggle  of  life,  and,  yielding  to  alcohol,  is 
wooed  by  blissful  states  of  mind,  which  are  tem- 
porary and  soon  vanish.  He  wants  this  mock  hap- 
piness to  continue — he  indulges  more  and  more, 
until  the  habit  is  finally  acquired  and  he  finds  him- 
self a  confirmed  drunkard.  Some  are  quickly  de- 
stroyed by  it,  others  again  resist  its  ravages  for  a 
longer  period  only  to  yield  to  it  in  the  decrepitude 
of  old  age  or  when  his  resisting  powers  have  been 
battered  to  pieces  by  the  poison.  After  heredity 
it  is  next  as  a  cause  of  insanity. 

No  better  picture  can  be  obtained  of  the  effects 
of  alcohol  than  from  observing  a  drunken  person 
In  the  beginning,  that  is,  after  the  first  drink  or 
two,  there  is  usually  a  feeling  of  exhilaration — the 


Prison    Problems  31 

individual  feels  an  increase  of  his  mental  and  physi- 
cal powers.  This  stimulation  is  of  brief  duration. 
Soon  thereafter  symptoms  of  suspended  function 
set  in  and  the  toper  loses  his  sense  of  propriety,  his 
moral  tone  is  degraded,  you  cannot  successfully 
attract  his  attention  and  he  is  unable  to  do  any 
mental  or  physical  work.  This  gets  worse,  his 
speech  becomes  babbling  and  he  staggers  about 
and  is  unable  to  perform  co-ordinate  movements 
with  hands  or  lower  extremities.  If  at  this  stage 
he  pours  more  of  alcohol  into  his  system  he  will, 
in  common  parlance,  become  "dead  drunk,"  lose  his 
consciousness  and  not  infrequently  die  from  acute 
alcoholic  intoxication. 

Not  all  people,  however,  act  alike  when  "stewed." 
Some  of  them  are  in  a  fighting  mood  and  very 
active,  others  again  shed  tears  into  the  cup  of  artifi- 
cial bliss  and  are  very  depressed.  The  depression 
in  some  cases  is  so  great  as  to  lead  to  suicide. 

Once  the  habit  is  acquired,  the  individual  starts 
on  a  downward  path  and  sometimes  slower  at  other 
times  quicker  but  surely  lands  in  the  realms  of 
complete  mental  and  physical  decay.  There  is  no 
organ  in  the  body  which  is  immune  to  the  effects 
of  alcohol.  The  principal  organs  involved  however 
are  the  nervous  system  (particularly  the  brain),  the 
stomach  (catarrh  of  drunkards),  liver  (cirrhosis), 
and  the  kidneys.  He  begins  to  tremble,  his  stomach 
refuses,  he  develops  arteriosclerosis  (premature 
senility)  and  his  mind  becomes  enfeebled. 

Of  the  other  effects  we  find  disturbances  of  the 
sensation,  motion  and  the  intellect.  The  victim  feels 
tingling,  pricking  or  crawling  sensations  in  certain 
parts  of  his  body.  His  eyes  and  ears  become  de- 


32  Prison    Problems 

ranged  and  as  a  result  he  hears  strange  noises  and 
sees  things  which  are  not  there.  He  may  develop 
alcoholic  epilepsy  or  paresis. 

The  mental  changes  are  gradual  but  progressive. 
The  power  of  judgment  is  overthrown,  the  moral 
sense  annihilated  and  mendacity  appears  in  most 
bizarre  forms.  These  people  develop  all  sorts  of 
delusions,  the  most  characteristic  of  which  are  a 
certain  jealousy  and  marital  infidelity.  A  great 
many  divorce  cases  and  homicides  can  be  traced 
directly  to  alcohol.  The  mind  gradually  decays  and 
the  poor  sufferer  lapses  into  a  condition  of  total 
irresponsibility  (alcoholic  dementia). 

The  acute  form  of  alcoholism  known  to  all  who 
see  these  people  is  known  as  delirium  tremens. 
This  is  usually  seen  in  cases  where  the  drunkard 
debauches  and  robs  himself  of  sleep  and  food.  This 
condition  may  come  on  suddenly  or  develop  within 
a  day  or  two.  The  individual  usually  awakens  at 
night  trembling,  he  becomes  sleepless,  wants  to  get 
out  of  bed  and  do  some  imaginary  thing,  talks  con- 
stantly and  incoherently,  looks  about  uneasily  and 
fearfully  and  he  sees  all  sorts  of  animals  (snakes, 
rats,  mice,  alligators,  monkeys,  etc.) 

Surrounded  by  these  loathsome  creatures  and  ter- 
rified by  the  imaginary  screams  and  noises  he  hears, 
he  presents  a  picture  of  abject  horror.  The  horrors 
may  be  so  great  that  some  of  these  people  jump 
out  of  the  window  and  kill  themselves.  At  other 
times  again  he  imagines  the  people  about  him  to  be 
his  enemies  and  attempts  murder.  During  the  at- 
tack he  is  constantly  shrieking  and  is  evidently  in 
extremest  agony  and  suffering. 

In  favorable  cases  the  symptoms  subside,  the  pa- 


Prison    Problems  33 

tient  falls  into  a  refreshing  sleep  and  he  recovers. 
In  other  cases  again,  the  period  of  excitement  is 
followed  by  one  of  depression,  he  goes  into  a  stu- 
porous  state,  becomes  exhausted  and  dies.  In  some 
cases  he  may  die  suddenly,  from  a  paroxysm  of 
acute  failure  of  the  heart  or  from  some  complica- 
tion— rupture  of  a  vessel  of  the  brain,  or  pneumonia 
may  set  in  which  carries  him  off  promptly. 

I  believe  that  men  who  start  on  their  "alcoholic 
career"  should  spend  an  hour  or  two  in  the  receiv- 
ing wards  of  some  large  hospital  and  see  the  sights, 
and  pitiful  conditions  in  which  these  poor  people  are 
admitted.  An  object  lesson  of  this  sort  will  do  more 
good  than  reading  of  volumes  on  the  subject. 

It  is  a  universally  established  fact  that  the  im- 
moderate use  of  alcohol  will  surely  shorten  the 
life  of  the  individual.  It  is  asserted  on  good  author- 
ity that  the  mortality  of  the  intemperate  is  from 
four  to  five  times  greater  than  that  of  the  strictly 
temperate  of  the  same  age  and  in  the  same  class  of 
life. 

Many  death  certificates  show  the  cause  of  death 
to  be  due  to,  say  for  instance,  disease  of  the  liver, 
stomach,  brain  or  kidney  when  as  a  matter  of  fact 
the  individual  died  from  alcoholism.  This  is  fre- 
quently done  purposely  out  of  regard  for  the  feel- 
ings of  the  relatives  of  the  deceased. 

All  evidence  points  to  the  fact  that  alcohol,  ex- 
cept in  strict  moderation,  is  injurious  to  men  and 
women  who  exert  themselves  physically  or  those 
who  do  a  great  deal  of  mental  work.  For  all  en- 
gaged in  athletic  pursuits  it  has  a  distinctly  dam- 
aging influence  on  the  heart  and  blood  vessels.  For 
people  in  good  health  alcohol  in  any  form  presents 


34  Prison    Problems 

no  advantages  and  for  the  young  it  is  decidedly 
injurious. 

To  condense  the  whole  matter  it  may  be  sum- 
marized as  follows:  1.  The  abuse  of  alcoholic 
stimulants,  in  any  form  (wine,  beer,  whiskey,  etc.) 
is  largely  responsible  for  physical  deterioration,  and 
that  it  leads  to  diseases  of  practically  all  tissues  in 
the  body.  2.  Alcohol  reduces  the  natural  powers 
of  resistance  to  disease  possessed  by  healthy  indi- 
viduals. It  renders  them  liable  to  many  inflamma- 
tory disorders  and  causes  them  to  suffer  much  more 
from  any  illness  they  may  contract  and  making 
their  recovery  slow.  3.  Intemperance  predisposes 
to  consumption,  venereal  diseases  and  other  affec- 
tions. 4.  Children  of  intemperate  parents  are  ser- 
iously affected.  They  frequently  are  subject  to 
paralysis,  epilepsy  and  idiocy,  which,  if  not  leading 
to  death,  render  them  permanently  disabled.  5.  The 
increase  of  lunacy  is  largely  due  to  intemperance. 

Alcohol  is  the  poor  man's  enemy  and  the  de- 
stroyer of  society.  Take  a  trip  with  me  through 
the  stockyard  district  of  Chicago  and  you  can  no- 
where see  a  better  picture  of  mental  and  physical 
degeneracy  than  in  this  district.  For  blocks  at  a 
stretch  you  won't  find  a  house  without  a  saloon. 
(Some  of  them  have  two  in  one  house.)  The  in- 
mates, I  cannot  describe  for  want  of  space;  but 
suffice  it  to  say  that  no  human  hand  can  depict 
these  degenerate  animals  in  human  form.  These 
are  the  breeding  places  of  crime  and  misery  and  of 
mental  and  physical  decay. 


Prison    Problems  35 


HOW  A  EECITAL  IS  APPRECIATED 
BY  PRISONERS. 

Copied    from    The    Mirror,    Stilhvater,     Minn. 

"On  Sunday  the  members  of  the  Chautauqua  Cir- 
cle were  given  a  treat  that  will  long  be  remem- 
bered. Miss  Elizabeth  Hanson  of  Wisconsin,  travel- 
ing from  the  Lyceum  Bureau  of  Chicago,  was  the 
attraction.  She  gave  several  readings,  every  one  of 
them  grand.  None  can  be  chosen  as  the  best,  yet 
we  want  to  linger  over  the  reading  taken  from 
Ralph  Connor's  story,  'Black  Rock.'  The  scene  was 
in  a  Canadian  lumber  camp  and  the  minister  reads 
the  old,  old  story  wherein  The  Christ  is  lifted  up 
so  that  the  lumber  jacks  might  see  a  new  signifi- 
cance in  it. 

"I  would  that  I  had  the  pen  of  an  idealist,  so  that 
I  could  pay  a  fitting  tribute  to  Miss  Hanson  and 
— her  art.  I  have  listened  to  many  a  lyceum  work- 
er, but  that  story,  as  read  by  Miss  Hanson,  crowns 
everything  I  have  ever  heard.  The  old,  old  story; 
yet  she  told  it  so  beautifully  that  it  came  to  us  in 
a  newer  sense — newer  because  this  truth  was  driven 
home  to  us.  Heaven  is  still  open  to  the  worst  of 
us.  The  pure  life  as  held  up  by  Miss  Hanson  is 
the  secret  of  salvation.  There  is  no  substitute.  We 
have  tried  them  all  and  found  them  all  wanting. 
And,  now  and  again,  we  are  forced  to  go  back  to 
listen  anew  to  the  old,  old  story  that  tells  of  a  lowly 
Galilean  being  born,  to  give  hope  to  the  hopeless. 

"Miss  Hanson  is  gifted  with  a  very  pleasing  per- 
sonality, she  does  not  have  to  rely  solely  upon  her 


36  Prison    Problems 

art  to  win  her  audience.  She  has  but  to  smile  and 
tell  in  a  few  simple  words  (as  she  does)  her  creed 
of  Sunshine  'of  doing  the  best  she  can  in  all  the 
ways  she  can  whenever  she  can,'  and  she  has  her 
audience  from  the  start.  Her  art  keeps  it. 

""\Ye  do  not  know  whether  Miss  Hanson  has  any 
set  religion,  but  we  do  know  she  has  the  religion 
of  life.  She  tells  of  a  present,  but  in  the  telling  she 
brings,  out  of  the  past,  the  memories  of  white  boy- 
hood, and  white  prayer-times.  Old  wounds  we  had 
thought  closed  and  forgotten  opened  anew  and 
many  misty  eyes  there  were  when  she  told  the  story 
of  the  minister's  hearing  the  old,  old  story  from  his 
mother. 

"The  memory  of  Miss  Hanson  will  always  live  in 
our  hearts,  as  one  of  the  sweet  and  clean  visions 
of  the  better  life.  I  cannot  help  but  think  of  her 
in  connection  with  Owen  Kildare's  description  of 
his  'Mamie  Rose/  She  was  not  a  queenly  looking 
girl ;  all  her  queenliness  was  within. 

"There  are  stopping  places  along  the  downward 
path.  Every  man  gets  a  dozen  chances  to  stop  and 
meditate.  These  stopping  places  bear  a  sign.  'Halt ! 
View  thy  life !' 

"Did  the  speaker  bring  us  to  one  of  the  'stops?' 

"How  did  the  words  appeal  to  you? 

"Was  the  word  of  encouragement,  of  hope,  spok- 
en? 

"Did  the  scales  turn,  even  a  tiny  bit? 

"If  so,  you  may  say  with  me :  'Last  Sunday  we 
were  given  the  chance  to  see  such  beauty  of  char- 
acter in  a  girl,  that  we  can  appreciate  and  shape 
our  dreams  of  Heaven." 


Prison    Problems  37 


IS  THERE  A  CRIMINAL  CLASS? 

By  William  Allen  Pinkerton. 

Republished    from    Hampton's    Magazine. 

I  have  been  for  more  than  fifty  years  in  almost 
constant  association  with  crime  and  lawbreakers. 
I  may  fairly  claim  to  have  had  exceptional  oppor- 
tunities for  the  study  and  observation  of  the  opera- 
tion of  the  human  mind  and  the  motives  that  actu- 
ate those  whom  society  terms  criminals.  I  have 
reached  certain  conclusions  which  do  not  agree  with 
the  theories  of  some  eminent  scientists  nor  altogeth- 
er harmonize  with  the  teachings  of  the  sociological 
schools.  I  have  no  new  theory  to  advance,  but  it 
seems  to  me  some  facts  have  been  generally  over- 
looked. 

No  one  can  study  criminals  at  close  range  and 
believe  in  the  existence  of  a  criminal  class,  regard- 
less of  what  Lombroso  and  his  disciples  may  claim. 
It  should  not  require  any  lengthy  argument  to  prove 
this  assertion.  If  there  were  a  criminal  class,  sharp- 
ly defined  as  such  and  differentiated  from  the  rest 
of 'the  human  race  by  ascertainable  characteristics, 
then  it  must  follow  that  there  would  be  a  non- 
criminal  class,  comprising  the  rest  of  the  human 
race  and  as  sharply  distinguished  as  the  supposed 
criminal  class. 

Humanity  is  not  thus  divided  into  criminals  and 
non-criminals.  There  is  but  one  classification  that 
can  be  made — the  class  of  those  who  have  commit- 
ted crimes  and  the  class  of  those  who  have  not  yet 


38  Prison    Problems 

committed  crimes.  Within  certain  limits,  varying 
with  the  individual,  every  human  being  is  a  poten- 
tial criminal.  I  have  seen  this  illustrated  so  often 
that  I  am  never  surprised  to  learn  that  any  man  or 
woman,  however  highly  placed  and  however  greatly 
esteemed,  has  done  something  which  the  law  for- 
bids and  for  which  society  demands  a  penalty.  On 
the  other  hand,  however — and  this  is  the  bright 
side  of  the  shield — every  criminal  is  potentially  an 
honest  man,  and  with  the  right  kind  of  encourage- 
ment from  society  will  remain  honest  by  preference. 
It  is  my  observation  of  hundreds  of  criminals  whose 
reform  has  been  complete  and  permanent  that  makes 
this  conclusion  a  definite  one.  It  is  this  capacity  of 
humanity  to  turn  from  evil  ways  to  methods  of 
life  which  society  recognizes  as  right  and  proper 
that  really  proves  my  first  conclusion,  which  is 
that  crime  is  an  accident  to  which  a  moment's  care- 
lessness may  subject  any  living  person.  If  these 
criminals  who  have  reformed  had  belonged  to  a 
different  order  of  humanity  from  those  of  us  who 
have  so  far  been  fortunate  enough  not  to  have  yield- 
ed to  the  impulse  to  crime,  how  could  they  have 
become  members  of  the  order  to  which  we  profess 
to  belong? 

Men  and  women  who  have  had  every  advantage 
society  can  offer  and  whose  moral  training  has 
been  at  least  up  to  the  average  standard,  commit 
crimes  when  the  temptation  and  the  opportunity 
occur  simultaneously.  I  would  hesitate  to  say  that 
any  man  is  temptation-proof.  It  is  merely  a  ques- 
tion as  to  what  his  particular  temptation  is  and 
how  complete  the  opportunity  to  yield  to  it.  Great 
crimes  are  never  planned  by  men  of  a  low  order  of 


Prison    Problems  39 

intelligence  and  the  better  educated  a  man  is  the 
more  dangerous  does  he  become  when  he  turns 
criminal. 

The  motive  that  inspires  nine  crimes  out  of  every 
ten  is  the  desire  to  get  money  faster  or  easier  than 
it  can  be  earned  legitimately.  It  is  everlastingly 
true,  as  St.  Paul  said,  that  "the  love  of  money  is  the 
root  of  all  evil."  Not  money,  but  the  love  of  money, 
which  is  quite  a  different  thing.  It  is  the  love  of 
money  that  may  make  a  criminal  out  of  any  honest 
man,  depending  only  upon  how  strongly  he  desires 
the  money  and  how  easy  it  seems  to  get  it.  I  do 
not  mean  that  there  is  no  one  who  would  resist  the 
temptation  to  walk  away  with  his  neighbor's  purse 
if  he  felt  sure  he  could  do  so  undetected,  but  most 
of  us  would  prefer  not  to  be  subjected  to  that  kind 
of  temptation.  Yet  there  are  men  who  have  been 
criminals — men  classed  by  the  police  as  habitual 
criminals — who  do  resist  the  temptation  when  it 
lies  at  their  hands. 

What  is  the  underlying  motive  in  most  criminals? 
Is  it  the  dread  of  prison  that  influences  the  ordinary 
criminal  to  turn  straight?  Fear  of  the  prison — or, 
rather,  of  the  disgrace  of  exposure — may  keep  some 
men  from  turning  criminals,  but  I  have  seldom 
known  the  dread  of  returning  to  a  cell  to  have  much 
influence  on  one  who  has  served  time.  It  is  some- 
thing deeper  than  that — call  it  conscience,  if  you 
will — that  makes  men  desire  to  reform.  I  think  it 
is  experience  and  observation.  The  most  hardened 
crook  comes  at  some  time  in  his  career  to  a  realiza- 
tion that  the  honest  man  has  a  better  time  of  it — 
that  the  privilege  of  walking  down  Broadway  in 
broad  daylight  is  worth  making  an  effort  for. 


40  Prison    Problems 

My  sympathies  are  with  the  Jean  Valjeans.  I 
regard  the  character  of  Javert,  the  police  officer  in 
"Les  Miserables"  as  the  most  despicable  in  all  litera- 
ture. If  the  escaped  criminal  continues  to  commit 
crimes,  that  is  another  matter.  But  if  a  criminal 
has  reformed  what  could  the  prison  do  for  him? 
Our  modern  conception  of  a  prison  is  as  a  place 
where  men  are  to  be  reformed.  It  would  be  sheer 
vindictiveness  to  send  back  a  man  who  has  re- 
formed outside  the  walls. 

The  whole  question  of  crime  and  criminals  is 
one  which  our  modern  civilization  hasn't  yet  got 
to  the  bottom  of.  We  are  very  far  advanced  be- 
yond the  ideas  of  even  a  century  ago.  We  no 
longer  classify  as  crimes  many  things  which  were 
so  regarded  in  an  earlier  age,  nor  do  we  punish  tri- 
vial offenses  with  the  same  severity  that  once  pre- 
vailed. There  probably  are  men  yet  living  who  can 
remember  when  nearly  one-hundred  different  of- 
fenses were  punishable  by  death  in  England.  A 
comparatively  short  time  ago  the  theft  of  anything 
valued  at  more  than  six-pence  was  a  capital  crime. 
Nor  has  crime  increased  with  the  relaxation  of  the 
penalties.  On  the  contrary,  crime  is  steadily  de- 
creasing, through  various  causes,  and  that  is  my 
second  general  conclusion,  drawn  from  a  lifetime's 
experience. 

Society  has  begun  to  learn  that  one  way  of  pre- 
venting boys  and  girls  from  becoming  criminals 
is  to  give  them  proper  care  and  attention  when 
young.  The  children's  courts,  that  have  been  es- 
tablished in  several  cities,  are  still  only  in  the 
experimental  stage,  but  have  already  demonstrated 
their  usefulness  as  a  means  of  diverting  youthful 


Prison    Problems  41 

offenders  from  the  downward  path.  Much  remains 
to  be  done  in  the  way  of  improving  prison  condi- 
tions. Long  steps  have  been  made,  however,  in  the 
direction  of  making  our  prisons  and  penitentiaries 
agencies  for  moral  reform  rather  than  vindictive 
instruments  of  punishment.  The  time  is  coming, 
as  enlightenment  increases,  when  men  will  come  out 
of  prison  sounder  in  body  and  mind  than  they  went 
in  and  with  hands  and  heads  trained  to  useful  and 
profitable  occupations.  In  this  way  we  shall  grad- 
ually be  able  to  eliminate  the  habitual  criminal, 
while  better  educational  methods  and  a  clearer 
recognition  by  the  state  of  its  duty  to  the  child 
cannot  fail  to  reduce  materially  the  proportion  of 
first  offenders. 

But  with  all  these  moral  forces  at  work,  are 
there  not  more  clever  and  more  skillful  criminals 
at  work  today  than  ever  before,  is  a  question  that 
is  often  asked.  There  are  not  more  criminals,  but 
cleverer  ones.  The  successful  great  criminal  of 
today  has  to  be  cleverer  than  ever  before,  not  only 
because  he  runs  an  infinitely  greater  chance  of  being 
caught  than  did  his  predecessors  in  crime,  but  be- 
cause modern  methods  of  preventing  crime  are  more 
efficient.  We  hear  a  great  deal  of  the  scientific 
criminal,  but  the  scientific  detective  has  more  than 
kept  pace  with  him. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  moral  agencies  which  are 
striving  to  make  crime  less  attractive,  or  at  least 
to  make  honest  labor  more  attractive,  there  are 
constantly  being  developed  new  methods  of  pre- 
venting crime  and  of  making  it  more  hazardous  and 
less  profitable.  Not  only  are  means  of  protecting 
life  and  property  constantly  being  improved,  but 


42  Prison    Problems 

there  is  no  branch  of  science  that  cannot  be  brought 
to  bear  and  is  not  utilized  on  occasion  in  the  solu- 
tion of  detective  problems  that  would  have  been 
unsolvable  mysteries  a  few  years  ago. 

A  single  hair  may  send  a  man  to  the  gallows. 
A  single  drop  of  blood  in  the  hands  of  an  analytical 
chemist  may  spell  life  imprisonment  for  a  criminal. 
There  is  no  poison  the  traces  of  which  cannot  be 
detected,  while  the  microscope  has  made  success- 
ful forgery  almost  impossible.  The  applicaton  of 
the  mathematical  law  of  chance  has  proved  it  pos- 
sible even  to  identify  the  particular  machine  on 
which  any  certain  typewritten  document  was  pro- 
duced. The  science  of  numbers  has  also  been  ap- 
plied to  the  identification  and  recovery  of  stolen 
property,  making  it  increasingly  difficult  for  the 
thief  to  dispose  of  his  booty. 

Railroads,  steamships,  the  telegraph,  the  tele- 
phone, the  wireless  and  now  the  aeroplane  have 
combined  to  make  the  world  smaller  and  reduce 
the  chances  of  the  criminal's  successful  escape  from 
pursuit.  Canada  and  Mexico  are  no  longer  popu- 
lated by  defaulting  bank  cashiers  from  the  United 
States,  for  international  extradition  treaties  now 
cover  almost  the  entire  habitable  globe. 

It  was  once  a  very  simple  matter  for  the  clever 
criminal  to  change  his  identity  so  completely  that 
even  when  his  crime  was  positively  known  he  could 
remain  immune  from  arrest  under  the  very  eyes  of 
the  police.  First  photography,  then  the  Bertillon 
system  of  measurements,  which  has  lately  been  sup- 
plemented by  a  system  of  classifying  individual 
characteristics,  and  latest  and  best  of  all,  the  finger- 
print method  of  identification,  are  all  operating  to 


Prison    Problems  43 

reduce  the  criminal's  chance  of  escaping  punish- 
ment to  the  minimum.  In  my  opinion  the  finger- 
print method  will  prove  to  be  the  most  useful,  as 
it  is  the  most  accurate  means  of  detecting  criminals. 
Photography  alone  does  not  furnish  positive  means 
of  identification. 

Some  years  ago  Chas.  Schumacher,  one  of  our 
operatives,  was  killed  by  two  criminals  of  the  type 
known  as  "yeggs,"  at  Union,  Mo.  There,  by  the 
way,  is  the  most  dangerous  class  of  criminals  now 
in  existence — the  "yegg."  I  do  not  know  the  deriva- 
tion of  the  name,  but  every  criminal  and  every 
pursuer  of  criminals  knows  it  to  mean  a  class  of 
tramps  whose  specialty  is  safe-blowing,  operating 
in  small  towns  and  villages,  robbing  post-offices, 
rural  banks  and  similar  easily  opened  safes.  It  is 
characteristic  of  the  "yegg"  as  of  no  other  type  of 
criminal,  that  he  will  shoot  to  kill  at  the  first  sus- 
picion of  discovery.  Every  "yegg"  is  a  murderer, 
actual  or  potential,  as  well  as  a  burglar. 

The  two  "yeggs"  who  killed  Schumacher,  Wil- 
liam Rudolph  and  George  Collins,  were  arrested  at 
Hartford,  Conn.,  and  taken  to  St.  Louis,  where 
they  were  confined  in  the  Four  Courts  prison  and 
their  Bertillon  measurements  taken.  They  escaped 
from  jail,  and  in  the  search  for  them  every  "yegg"' 
captured  anywhere  in  the  United  States  was  held 
until  one  of  our  men  could  look  them  over  to  see 
if  they  were  Rudolph  and  Collins.  Two  "yeggs" 
were  captured  in  Kansas  whose  description  tallied 
with  that  of  the  fugitives,  but  when  the  Bertillon 
test  was  applied  their  measurements  did  not  tally 
with  the  record  taken  in  St.  Louis.  Fortunately, 
the  local  authorities  were  able  to  hold  the  men 


44  Prison    Problems 

until  some  one  who  knew  Rudolph  and  Collins 
could  reach  the  spot  and  the  identification  was  then 
easily  made  by  their  finger-prints. 

It  is  surprising  that  the  finger-print  method  for 
purposes  of  identification  was  not  universally 
adopted  long  ago.  It  has  been  in  use  among  the 
merchants  of  the  interior  of  China  for  untold  cen- 
turies, the  thumb-print  affixed  to  a  receipt  or  a 
promise  to  pay  being  more  binding  than  a  signa- 
ture, because  of  the  impossibility  of  forgery.  No 
two  persons  have  been  found  whose  finger-prints 
are  alike,  and  it  is  the  one  distinguishing  character- 
istic of  the  individual  that,  barring  accident  or  muti- 
lation, does  not  change  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 

In  this  country  the  finger-print  record  has  been 
adopted  by  the  police  departments  of  the  principal 
cities  and  in  every  state  prison  and  penitentiary. 
It  has  been  adopted  by  the  United  States  Army, 
which  now  keeps  a  record  of  the  finger-impressions 
of  every  enlisted  man  as  a  means  of  identification 
in  case  of  death  on  the  battlefield,  as  well  as  for  the 
detection  in  case  of  desertion.  Not  long  ago  I  was 
asked  by  the  War  Department  whether  it  was 
necessary  to  take  a  new  set  of  finger-prints  at  each 
re-enlistment.  I  replied  that  this  was  unnecessary 
unless  the  subject  had  received  injuries  that  left 
scars  on  his  fingers. 

The  finger-print  method  requires  no  special  opera- 
tors, like  photography,  nor  expert  accuracy,  like  the 
Bertillon  system.  Any  schoolboy  can  take  finger- 
prints as  well  as  a  trained  expert  could  do  it.  There 
is  no  difficulty  in  indexing  and  classifying  finger- 
prints for  rapid  reference  and  comparison.  Of 
course  skillful  criminals  now  wear  gloves  or  take 


Prison    Problems  45 

other  precautions  to  avoid  leaving  traces  behind 
them,  but  once  a  man's  finger-prints  have  been 
recorded  there  is  no  way  in  which  he  can  success- 
fully conceal  his  identity.  If  the  system  is  extended, 
as  it  doubtless  will  be,  until  the  finger-impressions 
of  substantially  all  the  world  are  on  record,  many 
classes  of  crimes  will  disappear  from  the  calendar. 

The  finger-print  alone,  of  course,  will  never  detect 
criminals.  One  cannot  walk  along  the  street  study- 
ing the  finger-print  of  everyone  whom  he  meets, 
and  there  will  always  be  work  for  the  skillful  de- 
tective so  long  as  crime  continues  and  criminals 
flourish.  But  the  record  will  eventually  make  it 
impossible  for  the  criminal  to  hide,  and  consequent- 
ly furnish  another  incentive  to  reform,  while  science 
is  making  it  more  difficult  for  him  to  conceal  the 
evidences  of  his  crime,  modern  protective  measures 
are  making  crime  more  difficult,  youthful  offenders 
are  kept  from  becoming  criminals  and  those  who 
have  erred  are  being  aided,  through  diverse  agencies, 
to  re-establish  themselves  as  honest  citizens. 

I  do  not  expect  mankind  to  reach  that  state  of 
perfection  in  the  near  future.  I  do  contend,  how- 
ever, that  because  of  the  causes  I  have  outlined, 
crime  is  decreasing,  criminals  are  becoming  fewer 
and  the  number  of  those  who  really  reform  is  con- 
stantly increasing.  After  fifty  years  of  experience  in 
the  detection  of  crime  and  the  pursuit  of  criminals 
I  am  still  an  optimist. 


46  Prison    Problems 


THE  MAN  IN  THE  CAGE. 

By  Julian  Leavitt. 

Republished    from    The    American    Magazine. 

When  I  first  began  my  investigations  into  prison 
life  and  labor  I  believed,  as  most  of  the  readers  of 
this  article  probably  believe,  that  the  grosser  cruel- 
ties of  the  cage  were  a  thing  of  the  past.  I  was 
familiar  with  the  prison  history  of  the  last  century, 
when  the  lease  and  contract  systems  held  sway 
everywhere.  In  those  days  scarcely  a  year  passed 
without  its  sickening  scandal.  Men,  women,  chil- 
dren, were  systematically  beaten,  starved,  and  tor- 
tured in  the  mad  drive  for  prison  profits.  There 
was  no  evil  too  wicked  to  be  inflicted  upon  these 
creatures  who  had  fallen  under  the  heel  of  society. 
It  was  monstrous.  Such  things,  I  felt,  could  not 
possibly  exist  today.  And  in  this  belief  I  was  con- 
firmed by  all  the  students  of  penology  to  whom  I 
talked. 

Genial  wardens  assured  me  that  the  reign  of 
brutalitarianism  was  over.  Kindly  penologists  as- 
sured me  that  the  reign  of  humanitarianism  was 
already  ushered  in.  Some  even  believed  that  the 
pendulum  had  swung  too  far  in  that  direction. 

"We  are  coddling  our  criminals  too  much,"  a 
judge  told  me;  "no  good  can  come  of  it!" 

And  external  evidence  seemed  to  lend  color  to 
this  protest.  Clean  cells,  books,  games,  bands,  even 
prison  newspapers  and  moving  picture  shows,  all 
seemed  to  indicate  that  revolution  in  prison  meth- 
ods was  in  full  swing. 


Prison    Problems  47 

And  yet  the  moment  I  began  to  probe  below  these 
pleasant  surface  phenomena  I  discovered  that  pris- 
ons were  still  prisons.  In  nearly  half  the  States  of 
the  Union  today  the  basic  industrial  conditions  in 
the  prison  world  are  virtually  the  same  as  they 
were  fifty  and  a  hundred  years  ago.  Everywhere, 
from  Maine  to  Texas,  we  still  sell  prisoners  to 
outside  interests  for  the  profit  they  may  take  out 
of  prison.  That  is,  men  without  rights  are  put  com- 
pletely into  the  power  of  men  without  feelings. 

Let  me  tell  briefly  what  the  good  people  of  Kan- 
sas and  Michigan  discovered,  almost  inadvertently, 
only  a  year  or  two  ago.  I  must  state  plainly,  at 
the  outset,  that  these  two  instances  are  selected  for 
description,  not  because  they  are  exceptional  in  any 
degree,  but  because  they  are  typical  and  recent. 
There  are  a  dozen  or  more  records  of  legislative  in- 
vestigations within  the  past  decade  which  have 
revealed  worse  conditions  than  are  described  below. 

The  first  case  is  that  of  the  Branch  Penitentiary 
of  Michigan,  located  at  Marquette.  It  is  often 
known  as  the  Upper  Peninsula  Prison.  It  is  a 
small  prison,  as  prisons  go,  yet  it  was  the  storm 
center  of  the  legislative  session  of  1911  and  filled 
thousands  of  newspaper  columns  with  its  story  of 
manifold  horror. 

Its  population  numbers  about  300,  of  whom  some 
240  are  employed  by  two  contractors,  one  a  box- 
making  concern  with  74  men  (its  contract  expired 
July  31,  1911,  and  was  not  renewed),  and  the  other 
the  firm  of  G.  G.  Shauer  &  Bro.,  overall  manufac- 
turers, of  Chicago.  As  usual,  the  contracts  are  sold 
for  a  song,  the  State  giving  factory  buildings  rent 
free  and  tax  free,  heat,  light,  power,  superintendence 


48  Prison    Problems 

and  even  drayage  free  and  the  labor  of  the  men  for 
45  cents  a  day. 

The  warden,  as  usual,  is  a  powerful  politician. 
He  is  also  a  friend  of  the  Governor  and  owner  of 
a  controlling  interest  in  an  influential  newspaper. 

For  many  years  past  rumors  had  been  circulating 
among  the  people  of  Michigan  concerning  Warden 
Russell's  institution ;  yet  he  was  powerful  enough 
to  ward  off  any  public  investigation  until  1909,  when 
the  State  Legislature  appointed  a  special  commit- 
tee to  probe  and  report,  This  committee  made  a 
hurried  visit  to  the  prison,  but  found  the  convicts 
unwilling  to  testify  for  fear  of  punishment — a  fear 
amply  justified,  as  later  events  proved;  for  one  of 
the  few  inmates  who  had  been  rash  enough  to 
talk,  a  boy  by  the  name  of  Johnson,  was  found  by 
the  committee,  in  the  course  of  a  return  visit,  laid 
up  in  the  hospital  as  a  result  of  the  vindictive  pun- 
ishments which  had  been  inflicted  upon  him  by 
the  prison  officers.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
members  of  the  committee,  feeling  that  the  truth 
was  not  to  be  had,  returned  to  Lansing  and  pre- 
sented a  fragmentary  report  which,  everyone  felt, 
could  not  possibly  end  the  matter. 

Two  years  later  a  new  committee  was  appointed, 
with  the  fullest  legislative  authority.  This  time 
the  committee  stayed  a  week,  took  two  thousand 
pages  of  testimony,  and  returned  to  the  capital  with 
a  report  which  stirred  the  State  of  Michigan  to  its 
depths.  "The  debate  on  these  findings,"  says  the 
Lansing  Journal,  "furnished  one  of  the  most  sensa- 
tional sessions  ever  held  by  the  Michigan  House 
of  Representatives.  The  galleries  were  crowded,  as 
well  as  the  side  lines  when  the  House  convened 


Prison    Problems  41> 

at  7  :30  o'clock,  and  the  sympathies  of  the  spectators 
throughout  the  long  argument,  which  lasted  until 
nearly  one  o'clock,  were  with  the  convicts ;  and 
gradually  the  House  was  wrought  to  a  pitch  of  in- 
tense feeling  which  threatened  even  more  exciting 
scenes." 

Unfortunately  it  was  impossible  to  keep  politics 
out  of  this  affair,  and  the  committee  records,  as 
well  as  the  legislative  debates  and  the  press  discus- 
sions, were  largely  tinged  with  partisan  feeling. 
The  committee  of  five  did,  however,  agree  on  all  the 
essential  facts,  splitting  only  on  the  recommenda- 
tion affecting  the  warden — a  minority  of  two  recom- 
mending his  dismissal  and  a  majority  of  three  favor- 
ing his  retention,  but  not  without  a  curtailment  of 
his  disciplinary  powers.  The  House  adopted  the 
adverse  report,  and  called  upon  the  Governor  to 
dismiss  Warden  Russell,  but  he  ignored  the  resolu- 
tion and  the  administration  of  the  prison  is,  there- 
fore, unchanged  to  this  day. 

In  reporting  the  findings  of  the  committee  I  shall 
aim  to  present  only  the  evidence  which  is  indorsed 
unanimously;  otherwise  the  source  will  be  expressly 
indicated;  and  I  shall  use,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
language  of  the  official  report  as  published  in  the 
House  journal. 

In  its  externals,  the  Marquette  prison,  like  most 
of  our  modern  institutions,  was  found  to  be  clean, 
and  even  inviting.  The  corridors  were  spotless, 
the  cells  light  and  even  airy,  and  the  food  good  and 
plentiful.  But  in  the  prison  factory,  where  the  men 
spend  more  than  half  of  their  waking  hours,  and 
where  visitors  rarely  penetrate,  ruled  a  system  of 
exploitation  that  was  perfect  and  complete.  The 


50  Prison    Problems 

foreman  of  the  overall  factory  which  employed  the 
greater  number  of  the  inmates  was  William  Rus- 
sell, brother  of  the  warden.  He,  it  seems,  was  the 
real  power  in  the  prison,  and  he  was  dominated  by 
the  single  ambition  that  dominates  all  foremen — 
maximum  output. 

It  was  found,  says  the  majority  report,  that  more 
than  three-quarters  of  the  punishment  reports  orig- 
inated in  the  overall  shop,  were  signed  by  William 
Russell,  and  the  offense  charged  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  "Not  doing  task,"  and  in  many  more  cases  the 
offense  was  something  that  grew  out  of  this  same 
cause,  "Not  doing  task."  These  tasks,  adds  the 
minority  report,  were  beyond  all  reason. 

The  punishments  were  varied  and  frequent,  but 
the  most  common  was  by  the  paddle,  a  scientific 
instrument,  carefully  designed,  it  seems,  to  inflict  a 
maximum  of  suffering  without  infringing  upon  the 
humane  law  of  the  State,  which  is  very  explicit 
upon  this  point.  It  reads: 

"The  warden  or  deputy  warden  may  punish  the 
convict  for  misconduct  in  such  manner  and  under 
such  regulations  as  shall  be  adopted  by  the  board ; 
Provided,  that  punishment  by  showering  with  cold 
water  or  whipping  with  the  lash  on  the  bare  body 
shall  in  no  case  be  allowed." 

Now  the  paddle  is  not  a  lash.  It  is  merely  a 
piece  of  heavy  sole  leather  shaped  like  a  tennis  rack- 
et and  fastened,  with  copper  rivets,  to  a  wooden 
handle.  It  weighs  about  two  pounds.  The  auxiliary 
apparatus  consists  of  a  ladder,  a  barrel,  chains, 
handcuffs  and  ropes.  The  ladder  is  about  nine  feet 
long  and  has  a  set  of  brackets  in  which  the  barrel 
is  held  firmly,  lengthwise.  The  barrel  is  small, 


Prison    Problems  51 

perhaps  the  size  of  a  "half"  beer  barrel.  The  pris- 
oner, stripped,  is  laid  upon  the  barrel,  his  feet 
roped  to  rungs  at  one  end  of  the  ladder  and  his 
hands  bound  with  steel  cuffs  which  are  chained  to 
the  other  end  of  the  ladder.  Two  men  then  unite 
their  strength  to  stretch  these  ropes  and  chains  taut, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  prisoner's  body  from  moving 
or  giving  at  any  point,  thereby  weakening  the  force 
of  the  blows.  In  short,  the  man's  body  is  by  this 
means  so  placed,  anatomically,  that  every  blow  of 
the  executioner  will  yield  its  maximum  result  in 
human  suffering. 

The  formal  preparations  completed,  the  experi- 
ment in  reformation  is  ready  to  begin.  The  prison- 
er's head  is  covered  by  a  sheet,  so  that  he  may  not 
see  his  tormentors.  Another  sheet  is  placed  upon 
his  back,  so  that  the  provision  of  the  humane  law 
against  punishment  on  the  bare  body  shall  not  be 
infringed.  The  warden  is  called  in  to  superintend; 
and  the  blows  are  laid  on.  Some  men  can  stand 
as  many  as  sixty  or  seventy  blows,  it  was  reported ; 
others  collapse  at  the  fifth  or  sixth ;  most  of  them 
faint  at  the  tenth  or  twelfth  blow  and  mercifully 
remain  unconscious. 

This  revolting  list  might  easily  be  extended  to 
fill  several  pages.  The  volume  of  two  thousand 
pages  of  testimony  is  simply  a  volume  of  medieval 
horrors.  Nor  are  these  tortures  accidental  or  oc- 
casional. They  are  the  very  basis  of  prison  policy, 
as  we  shall  see,  wherever  the  dominant  force  is 
the  contractor  and  his  demand  for  maximum  profits. 

One  would  like  to  believe  for  example,  that  the 
paddle  is  merely  an  accident  of  prison  life;  that  it 
was  an  instrument  which  was  seized  upon  in  a 


52  Prison    Problems 

moment  of  passion,  and  is  clung  to  because  it  was 
found  convenient.  Unfortunately,  the  evidence  is 
all  against  such  a  belief;  rather  does  it  point  to 
the  paddle  as  a  very  cold-blooded  invention  of  a 
mind  eager  to  inflict  torture,  but  afraid  to  infringe 
upon  the  law.  It  has  too  many  refinements  to  be 
an  accident.  One  of  these  is  peculiarly  diabolical  in 
its  intent.  The  piece  of  sole  leather  is  perforated  by 
many  small  holes,  perhaps  an  inch  or  two  apart. 
These  serve  a  double  purpose ;  they  suck  up  the  air 
which  would  otherwise  cushion  the  force  of  the 
blow  somewhat,  and  they  suck  up  the  victim's 
flesh  as  the  leather  comes  in  contact  with  it.  Then, 
says  the  report,  when  the  paddle  is  pulled  off  very 
slowly  and  carefully,  each  perforation,  as  it  releases 
the  flesh  which  has  adhered  to  it,  sends  its  own 
message  of  pain  to  the  man  on  the  rack,  thus  in- 
tensifying the  agony  a  hundredfold! 

No,  the  paddle  is  really  a  social  function  of  the 
prison ;  and  a  delicate  touch  is  added  to  the  cere- 
mony by  covering  the  victim's  body  with  a  sheet 
soaked  in  salt  water.  An  ordinary  sheet  would 
have  sufficed  to  evade  the  law ;  but  the  sting  of 
the  salt  water,  as  it  penetrates  the  lacerated  flesh, 
adds  an  exquisite  touch  of  pain.  Yet,  curious  to 
see,  one  of  the  chief  functionaries  at  the  ceremony, 
the  prison  physician  himself,  did  not  understand 
the  symbolism  of  the  brine.  Here  is  a  bit  of  his 
testimony: 

"What  do  they  wet  the  paddle  in?"  he  was  asked. 

"Salt  solution." 

"Why  in  salt  solution?" 

"I  do  not  know. — From  a  medical  standpoint  it 
might  be  that  there  would  be  less  pain  with  a  salt 
solution  than  with  plain  water." 


Prison    Problems  53 

"Isn't  it  true  that  paddling  is  done  to  inflict  pain? 
Then  why  should  they  wish  to  ameliorate  it  by  us- 
ing salt  water?" 

"I  don't  kno\v.  It  has  been  the  custom,  and  I 
have  never  changed  it.  I  cannot  say  why  it  should 
not  be  used.  I  cannot  say  why  it  should  be  dis- 
continued. Only  in  figuring  from  a  medical  stand- 
point, I  cannot  see  that  salt  water  is  detrimental 
or  harmful  in  the  least." 

The  strait-jacket,  once  a  favorite  in  most  prisons, 
but  now  rarely  used,  was  also  found  at  Marquette. 
It  is  an  instrument  well  beloved  by  the  more  brutal 
keepers,  I  am  told,  for  this  atrocious  reason:  The 
internal  organs  of  the  body,  as  every  student  of 
anatomy  knows,  are  packed  as  skillfully  as  only 
Nature,  with  its  millions  of  years  of  experience,  can 
pack  them.  But  if  the  body  be  encased  in  a  strait- 
jacket  and  the  straps  jerked  to  the  last  notch,  the 
delicate  internal  organs  may  be  permanently  dis- 
placed without  leaving  any  external  evidence. 

A  milder  form  of  punishment — or  perhaps,  I 
should  say,  a  less  spectacular  form  of  it,  is  the 
"cuffing  up"  of  men  by  their  wrists  with  handcuffs 
and  chains  to  a  staple  in  the  wall  or  to  the  upper 
bars  of  a  cell  gate  in  the  "bull  pen,"  a  special  pun- 
ishment room.  This  was  frequently  used  in  Mar- 
quette. 

"It  must  be  remembered,"  says  the  minority  re- 
port, already  quoted,  "that  the  hands  of  every  con- 
vict are  drawn  up  to  the  same  height.  Such  a  posi- 
tion allows  some  men  a  chance  to  rest  their  arms 
somewhat  on  the  cross  bars,  but  it  compels  others 
to  raise  their  hands  above  their  heads  and  subjects 
them  to  most  extreme  torture.  Men  have  been 


54  Prison    Problems 

chained  continuously  in  this  position  for  a  period 
of  fifteen  days,  only  getting  relief  at  night  when 
allowed  to  lie  on  their  cots.  The  handcuffs  are 
never  removed.  One  can  probably  form  some  idea 
of  what  it  must  mean  to  wait  on  oneself  in  such  a 
condition." 

Parenthetically,  I  may  remark  that  this  is  per- 
haps the  most  common  form  of  punishment  in  our 
prisons  today,  especially  in  contract  prisons.  I 
have  never  visited  one  of  these  without  finding  the 
bull  pen  occupied.  The  filth  and  degradation  of  it  are 
indescribable.  I  can  only  suggest  them  by  quoting 
the  words  which  the  inmates  of  one  such  institution 
bestowed  upon  a  former  warden  of  blessed  memory, 
in  contrast  to  the  harshness  of  his  successor,  "Now 
there  was  a  humane  man !"  they  told  me.  "When 
he  cuffed  a  man  up  he  would  let  one  hand  free  so 
that  we  could  at  least  care  for  ourselves!" 

But  to  return  to  Marquette.  Its  bull  pen  was 
never  without  victims.  One  elderly  man  named 
Myers,  of  excellent  conduct,  a  leader  of  the  band, 
an  eminent  citizen  in  general,  was  strung  up  six 
days  for  failure  to  perform  task.  George  H.  Hamil- 
ton, strung  up  for  seventeen  hours  consecutively, 
lost  the  use  of  his  left  hand  permanently.  Earl  A. 
Thompson,  a  bookkeeper  before  he  went  wrong, 
was  unskilled  as  a  machine  operator.  He  could 
only  finish  thirty-six  dozens  of  the  forty  which  his 
task  called  for.  He  was  strung  up  for  two  days. 

They  were  punished  for  all  manner  of  trivial  of- 
fenses. One  man  was  punished  for  using  black 
thread  instead  of  white,  another  for  attempting  to 
send  a  letter  out  of  prison  against  the  rules,  another 
for  breaking  needles  (a  frequent  and  unavoidable 


Prison    Problems  55 

accident  in  overall  manufacturing,  as  the  hard  cloth 
offers  an  irregular  resistance  to  the  delicate,  swiftly- 
flying  needles  of  the  machine).  But  by  far  the 
greatest  number  of  punishments — estimated  by  the 
investigating  committee  at  three-fourths — was  for 
failure  to  perform  the  tasks  assigned.  What  these 
tasks  were  I  have  not  been  able  to  ascertain ;  it 
seems  that  there  was  no  regular  schedule,  the  fore- 
man (who,  you  will  remember,  was  the  warden's 
own  brother)  speeding  the  men  individually  to  their 
limit  and  punishing  them  for  not  exceeding  it. 
The  legislative  committee  of  1909  reported  that 
"Conditions  in  the  shops  indicated  that  the  men 
were  worked  to  the  physical  limit,  far  beyond  that 
expected  in  a  free  shop.  It  seemed  as  though  every 
man  was  exerting  every  atom  of  energy  in  his  make- 
up to  perform  the  tasks  assigned  him."  This  is 
emphasized  even  more  strongly  in  the  report  of 
the  committee  of  1911,  both  the  majority  and  the 
minority  reports  concurring,  as  a  result,  in  the  de- 
mand that  all  contracts  at  the  institution  can  be 
cancelled  immediately.  But  it  was  soon  discovered 
that  one  of  the  peculiar  features  of  the  contract  was 
that  although  the  contractor  could  cancel  the  bar- 
gain upon  six  months'  notice  to  the  State,  the  State 
was  tied  for  the  full  period  of  five  years.  The  con- 
tract, therefore,  is  still  in  force  until  1913. 

It  would  be  unfair  to  close  this  chapter  of  the 
story  without  giving  the  warden's  side  of  the  case. 
His  defense,  briefly,  resolved  itself  into  this:  (1) 
Since  the  death  penalty  is  not  inflicted  in  Michigan, 
its  prisons  house  many  degenerates  who  elsewhere 
would  have  been  put  out  of  the  way  altogether; 
(2)  the  men  singled  out  for  punishment  were,  as  a 


56  Prison    Problems 

rule,  among  the  most  bestial  of  these ;  creatures  who 
had  committed  nameless  crimes  while  in  freedom 
and  who  were  vicious  and  unruly  in  captivity;  there- 
fore (3)  they  deserved  all  they  got;  and  (4)  any- 
way, he  could  not  run  the  prison  without  corporal 
punishment. 

The  last  item  in  the  defense  was  demolished,  cur- 
iously enough,  by  the  warden's  own  friends  in  the  in- 
vestigating committee,  who,  although  they  fought 
stoutly  and  successfully  for  his  retention,  neverthe- 
less recommended  that  the  power  to  inflict  corporal 
punishment  be  removed  from  his  hands  and  vested 
in  the  board  of  control;  and,  moreover,  that  in  no 
case  should  the  paddle  be  used  without  the  presence 
of  the  prison  physician,  the  chaplain,  and  one  mem- 
ber of  the  board  of  control.  This  last  recommenda- 
tion was  an  obviously  impossible  one,  as  the  mem- 
bers of  the  board  would  have  to  make  a  special 
trip  for  every  such  function.  The  committee  knew 
this  well;  the  recommendation  as  a  whole  may, 
therefore,  be  regarded  simply  as  a  measure  to  "save 
face."  And  since  the  use  of  the  paddle  has  been 
abandoned  the  necessity  for  its  use  seems  to  have 
disappeared  also.  "Not  a  single  convict  has  had  to 
be  reported,"  admitted  the  warden  lately,  "and  dis- 
cipline has  been  of  the  very  best."  It  seems,  then, 
that  when  need  drives  even  a  warden  must;  if  cor- 
poral punishment  is  flatly  forbidden  a  prison  may 
be  run  without  it,  after  all. 

With  the  warden's  own  admission  on  record  all 
the  other  items  of  the  defense  break  down  complete- 
ly; and  yet  it  may  be  well  to  say  a  word  upon  them. 
It  is  true  that  Warden  Russell's  prison  houses  an 
unusually  large  percentage  of  murderers  and  life 


Prison    Problems  57 

men.  But  the  "lifer,"  as  every  prison  man  knows, 
is  generally  the  best-behaved  man  in  the  community. 
He  may  have  committed  his  one  great  crime  in  a 
moment  of  passion  and  may  be,  at  bottom,  far  less 
dangerous  than  the  man  who  commits  many  small 
crimes  deliberately.  At  any  rate,  once  he  is  put 
away  he  adapts  himself  to  his  environment  as  sen- 
sibly as  most  men  do  in  freedom.  He  knows  that 
there  is  small  hope  of  pardon  so  he  "gets  in  right." 
He  becomes  conservative,  acquires  a  stake  in  the 
prison  world  in  the  form  of  a  superior  cell,  perhaps, 
or  some  other  trifling  perquisite,  and  enlists  per- 
manently on  the  side  of  law  and  order.  If  then, 
Warden  Russell  found  his  prisoners  unruly,  the 
reason  lay  elsewhere  than  with  his  life  men. 

I  have  set  down  the  facts  relating  to  Marquette 
prison  plainly  and  without  that  comment  which 
its  obvious  lesson  makes  superfluous.  I  shall  mere- 
ly emphasize  the  fact  that  this  prison  is  no  worse 
than  a  hundred  others  that  might  be  named.  It  is 
not  an  exception.  It  is  a  type.  I  have  described 
it  at  some  length  only  because  it  happens  to  have 
furnished  the  latest  of  our  perennial  prison  scan- 
dals. Within  the  last  five  or  ten  years  there  have 
been  a  dozen  similar  revelations  in  other  States — 
in  Illinois,  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  Georgia,  Texas,  Kan- 
sas. All  of  these  were  as  bad  as  Michigan,  Kansas 
was  even  worse.  The  story  of  its  clean-up  at  the 
hands  of  Kate  Barnard,  of  Oklahoma,  is  interesting. 

When  the  young  territory  of  Oklahoma  was  first 
confronted  with  the  crime  problem  it  had  no  prisons 
and  no  money  to  invest  in  these  luxuries.  It  solved 
this  problem,  however,  by  boarding  out  its  convicts 
to  its  neighbor,  Kansas,  which  owned  a  castle  of  a 


58  Prison    Problems 

prison  at  Lansing  that  housed  comfortably  nearly 
a  thousand  inmates  and  had  room  for  more.  Okla- 
homa paid  forty  cents  a  day  for  the  food  and  board 
of  its  convicts  and  permitted  Kansas  to  make  what- 
ever additional  profit  it  might  by  working  the  men 
in  its  own  coal  mine  or  in  the  contract  shops.  At 
the  time,  this  arrangement  seemed  reasonably  fair 
to  both  States.  But  it  was  not  long  before  both  of 
these  communities  were  to  learn  how  dangerous 
it  is  to  play  the  game  of  convict  exploitation. 

Oklahoma  became  a  State  in  1907.  By  that  time, 
some  of  its  people  had  begun  to  suspect  that  all 
was  not  well  with  the  Oklahoma  prisoners  in  the 
Kansas  Penitentiary.  Discharged  convicts  drifted 
back  to  their  homes  with  terrible  stories  of  mal- 
treatment. But  the  people  as  a  whole  were  too 
busy  to  listen;  and  even  had  they  stopped  to  heed 
there  were  no  means  of  confirming  the  convicts' 
stories. 

But  one  day  in  the  summer  of  1909  there  appeared 
on  the  streets  of  Lansing  a  little,  dark-haired  woman 
who  was  destined  to  make  a  stir  in  the  two  States 
before  she  had  finished  her  work.  She  found  her 
way  to  the  prison,  paid  her  admission  fee,  and 
joined  the  visitors'  line  in  the  old  castle.  The  well- 
trained  guide  conducted  the  party  through  the 
show-places  which  every  prison  care-stages  for  the 
curious  visitor — the  spotless  kitchen,  the  library, 
the  short  corridor  upon  which  face  the  comfortable 
cells  of  the  favored  inmates,  and  perhaps  the  Ber- 
tillon  room.  When  the  trip  was  over,  the  little 
woman  retraced  her  steps  to  the  warden's  office. 
To  the  trusty  at  the  door  she  presented  her  card. 
It  read : 


Prison    Problems  59 

KATE  BARNARD 

Commissioner  of  Charities  and  Corrections 
Oklahoma  City,  Oklahoma. 

Never  did  so  small  a  woman  and  so  simple  a 
card  create  such  consternation.  The  warden  met 
her  with  scant  civility. 

"What  is  it  that  you  want?"  he  asked  her. 

"I  should  like  to  go  through  this  prison,"  she 
answered,  "in  order  to  see  how  the  Oklahoma  pris- 
oners are  being  treated." 

"Well,  I  shall  have  to  consult  the  board  of  control 
about  that." 

The  board  happened  to  be  in  session  at  that  mo- 
ment. The  members  were  furious. 

"Who  commissioned  you  to  come  here  and  spy 
upon  us?"  one  of  them  cried  out. 

"A  million  and  a  half  citizens  of  Oklahoma,"  she 
answered,  with  all  the  dignity  that  a  small  person 
can  sometimes  muster. 

"You  may  either  show  me  through  or  show  me 
out,  as  you  please." 

The  men  blustered,  but  she  stood  her  ground, 
knowing  that  she  had  the  advantage  and  that  they 
knew  that  she  knew  it.  Finally  they  gave  way 
and  permitted  her  to  proceed  with  her  investiga- 
tions, putting  only  such  obstacles  in  her  way  as 
-eemed  to  suggest  themselves  at  the  moment. 

The  story  of  her  adventures  and  of  all  that  fol- 
•owed  forms  an  interesting  chapter  in  the  prison 
history  of  the  United  States.  It  is  told  in  full  in 
the  First  and  Second  Annual  Reports  of  the  State 
Commissioner  of  Charities  and  Corrections  of  the 
State  of  Oklahoma. 


60  Prison    Problems 

She  crept  and  crawled,  she  says,  through  the  inky 
depths  of  the  State  coal  mine  where  many  of  the 
Oklahoma  men  were  employed.  There  were  pas- 
sages so  narrow  that  if  the  earth  were  to  sag  ever 
so  little  a  large  man  could  never  get  out  alive — 
and  often  the  supports  were  bent  under  the  weight 
of  the  earth  above.  The  rumor  of  her  visit  went 
through  the  silent  prison  like  wildfire.  Every  Okla- 
homa man  felt  that  the  hour  of  his  salvation  had 
come;  yet  no  one  dared  to  approach  her  openly  to 
give  her  the  information  that  all  knew  she  was 
seeking.  But  occasionally,  in  the  protecting  dark- 
ness, some  boy  would  rush  past  her  and  whisper: 
"Look  for  the  water-hole,  girl" — or  "For  God's  sake, 
don't  go  away  without  seeing  the  crib  and  the 
dungeon !" 

She  stayed  only  a  short  while,  but  the  sight  and 
sound  of  what  she  saw  that  summer  day  drove  the 
two  States  to  appoint  a  joint  committee  to  investi- 
gate. The  first  session  was  amicable  enough,  but 
friction  soon  developed,  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected, and  the  joint  investigation  was  brought  to 
an  abrupt  close  when  Miss  Barnard  challenged 
the  committees  to  investigate  the  financial  manage- 
ment of  the  prison  as  well  as  its  physical  defects, 
which  were  all  too  obvious.  The  Kansas  Committee, 
so  far  as  I  am  informed,  never  reported  in  full ;  but 
a  brief  abstract  in' the  Fourth  Annual  Report  of  the 
Board  of  Health  seems  to  confirm  all  the  charges 
that  Miss  Barnard  made,  so  that  I  feel  justified  in 
quoting  freely  from  her  own  full  report,  which  also 
contains  a  stenographic  report  of  the  hearings  held 
by  the  joint  committee. 

The  task  in  the  coal  mine,  it  seems,  was  eighteen 


Prison    Problems  61 

cars  a  week — which,  according  to  report,  is  reason- 
able enough  for  a  skilled  miner,  but  impossible  for 
a  beginner.  The  learners  were,  therefore,  put  with 
the  older  men.  Thus  they  were  confronted  by  two 
alternatives;  either  to  put  themselves  completely 
at  the  service  of  these  older  men,  or  to  try  the  task, 
as  best  they  could,  alone ;  and  since  the  second 
alternative  meant  failure  and  inevitable  punish- 
ment, most  learners  were  willing  to  serve  the  older 
men.  The  fate  of  a  boy  who  was  thus  made  the 
slave  of  a  slave  in  a  dark  hole  in  a  mine  need  not 
be  dwelt  upon.  Miss  Barnard's  report  contains 
some  of  the  most  sickening  testimony  ever  printed 
in  the  English  language. 

The  punishments  at  Lansing  were  even  more 
murderously  cruel  and  deliberate  than  those  at  Mar- 
quette.  One  instrument  was  the  "crib"  or  "alka- 
zan,"  a  heavy  coffin  in  which  the  victim  was  placed, 
face  down,  his  hands  and  feet  tied  securely  and 
drawn  up  behind  his  back  until  they  met,  the  lid 
screwed  down  and  the  man  allowed  to  lie  for  hours 
tied  in  this  knot!  Or  he  was  placed  in  an  upright 
position,  tied  immovably,  his  mouth  plugged  open 
by  a  wedge  between  the  teeth,  his  face  and  mouth 
smeared  with  molasses,  and  the  windows  opened  to 
admit  the  flies  and  insects.  Another  punishment 
was  the  familiar  "water-cure,"  whereby  the  victim 
is  given  all  the  torments  of  drowning  by  having  a 
powerful  stream  of  water  forced  into  his  mouth, 
ears  and  nostrils.  And  the  more  conventional  pun- 
ishments— flogging,  the  dungeon,  etc. — were  in  con- 
stant use.  Here  are  a  few  cases  from  Miss  Bar- 
nard's record : 


62  Prison    Problems 

Bert  Lewis,  cribbed  two  days  in  1907  for  letting 
fire  die  down  in  kiln. 

Ellis  Dillon,  failing  to  get  out  his  three  tons  of 
coal  daily,  was  cribbed  four  days  one  week,  four 
days  the  next  week  and  six  days  the  third  week. 
Released  Thursday,  died  Monday. 

Joseph  Bruner,  cribbed  eight  days  in  1908. 

Martin  Bates,  water  cure,  crib  alkazan,  1907-8. 

Clarence  H.  Green,  21  days  dungeon,  1907  or  1908. 

Ed.  Carpenter,  water  cure  and  seven  days  dun- 
geon, 1907. 

Miss  Barnard  presented  dozens  of  cases  similar 
to  these  and  was  ready  to  present  fifty  others.  And 
the  testimony  of  all  tended  to  show  pretty  convinc- 
ingly that  the  Kansas  Penitentiary  was  an  elaborate 
apparatus  of  torture;  that  the  guards  murdered  the 
inmates  and  the  inmates  murdered  each  other;  that 
the  food  was  uneatable,  the  water  undrinkable  and 
the  life  unlivable — in  short,  that  the  State  of  Kan- 
sas was  spending  something  like  a  half  million  dol- 
lars a  year  in  the  manufacture  of  monsters. 

The  prison  administration  made  no  defense 
worthy  of  the  name.  "They  burned  the  cribs  before 
the  investigation,"  writes  Miss  Barnard.  "I  am  in- 
formed that  they  had  intended  to  keep  them  and 
undertake  to  demonstrate  how  harmless  they  were, 
but,  finding  many  blood  stains  on  the  woodwork, 
they  ordered  the  convicts  to  scrape  and  boil  them 
off,  but  the  cribs  had  been  used  so  much  that  they 
were  pretty  thoroughly  saturated,  so  that  the  stains 
could  not  be  removed." 

There  could  be  no  defense.  But  the  administra- 
tion was  powerful  enough  to  fight  without  one,  at 
least  for  a  time.  The  warden,  as  usual,  was  a  pow- 


Prison    Problems  63 

erful  politician.  At  the  time  of  the  investigation 
he  was  State  Senator ;  and  on  the  stand  he  testified 
that  he  had  been  member  of  the  school  board,  mayor 
of  his  town,  and  tersely — "all  that  sort  of  thing." 
He  was  a  personal  friend  of  Governor  Hoch.  The 
firm  which  held  the  principal  contract  in  his  institu- 
tion, the  Union  Overall  Company,  also  had  power- 
ful affiliations.  Its  vice-president  was  the  Honor- 
able D.  R.  Anthony,  Jr.,  now  representing  the  First 
District  in  Congress. 

Having  no  decent  defense,  the  powers  resorted 
to  an  indecent  one.  "Tales  were  circulated,"  says 
Miss  Barnard,  "that  my  motive  for  making  the 
charges  against  the  Kansas  Prison  was  'that  my 
husband  had  been  a  convict !'  When  it  was  pointed 
out  that  I  am  a  single  woman  the  tale  was  changed 
to  make  me  an  ex-convict.  When  our  committee 
resented  these  preposterous  stories  they  told  that 
the  Assistant  Commissioner  had  been  a  prisoner  in 
Lansing  Prison.  The  five  witnesses  brought  from 
Oklahoma  were  designated  as  "Kate  Barnard's 
Band  of  Murderers."  A  Kansas  City  reporter 
chided  me  with  bringing  such  men  as  wit- 
nesses. I  retorted  by  asking  him  who  but  convicts 
or  ex-convicts  could  testify  truly  as  to  what  took 
place  within  prison  walls.  He  confessed  that  no 
others  could,  but  ended  by  saying  that  he  would 
not  believe  such  men  under  oath.  This  was  an  ad- 
mission that  he  would  allow  horrors  to  exist  in  a 
prison  because  of  lack  of  proper  witnesses.  The 
sentiment  was  a  serious  handicap,  but  you  will  ob- 
serve by  reading  the  evidence  that  not  one  bit  of 
the  ex-convicts'  testimony  was  disproved." 

The  evidence  was  strong  enough  to  cause  drastic 


64  Prison    Problems 

action  to  be  taken  by  both  States.  The  Oklahoma 
prisoners  were  removed  in  the  dead  of  winter  and 
set  to  building  a  prison  for  themselves  in  their  own 
State.  Kansas,  left  to  grope  with  its  problem,  threw 
out  the  entire  prison  staff,  cancelled  the  contracts 
which  had  been  the  source  of  the  punishments,  and 
cleaned  and  humanized  the  institution  in  many 
ways.  Mr.  Codding,  the  new  warden,  is  a  big  man 
and  impressed  me,  in  the  course  of  a  brief  talk,  as 
a  strong  man.  With  the  aid  of  Governor  Stubbs, 
who  has  thrown  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the 
problem,  he  has  already  accomplished  great  results. 

The  scandal  which  Miss  Barnard  raised  has  end- 
ed well  for  two  States.  But  its  lessons  may  well 
serve  for  the  twenty-odd  other  States  where  con- 
victs are  still  exploited  for  profit. 

What  has  happened  in  the  midst  of  two  kindly 
communities  like  Kansas  and  Michigan  can  happen, 
and  does  happen,  elsewhere.  I  cannot  emphasize 
too  strongly  the  fact  that  these  two  cases  that  I 
have  described  at  some  length  are  not  exceptional. 
It  happened  that,  for  a  brief  moment,  their  windows 
were  opened  wide  and  we  were  allowed  to  see  what 
goes  on  in  the  name  of  the  State.  Other  prisons, 
no  less  guilty,  have  their  windows  firmly  shut  and 
curtained.  No  outside  investigator  can  possibly 
get  the  legal  evidence  necessary  to  convict.  Guards 
will  not  talk;  their  bread  and  butter  depends  upon 
silence.  Prisoners  cannot  talk;  for  so  long  as  they 
remain  in  the  cage  they  cannot  reach  the  outside 
world  with  their  stories,  for  not  a  letter  may  leave 
or  enter  the  prison  without  inspection,  and  when 
discharged  they  cannot  talk  for  their  liberty  fre- 
quently depends  upon  their  silence.  They  are  either 


Prison    Problems  65 

on  parole  or  on  probation ;  or  they  are  dependent 
upon  the  charity  of  a  prisoners'  aid  society  which 
is  itself  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of  the  prison 
administration.  The  warden  need  not  talk  for  he 
is  all-powerful.  He  is  the  one  public  official  who  is 
not  accountable  to  the  public  in  any  effective  de- 
gree. He  publishes  annual  reports;  but  no  one 
can  check  them  or  contradict  them,  for  he  holds 
the  keys  to  the  prison. 

To  get  legal  evidence  under  such  circumstances 
is,  I  must  repeat,  well-nigh  impossible;  yet,  I  have 
enough  information  to  justify  a  dogmatic  declara- 
tion that  wherever  the  contract  system  exists  in  any 
of  its  forms — either  lease,  piece-price  or  ordinary 
contract — there  exist  the  same  conditions  that  have 
been  exposed  in  Michigan  and  Kansas.  I  might 
even  say  that,  in  judging  contract  prisons,  it  is 
proper  to  reverse  the  usual  laws  of  evidence  and 
to  hold  them  guilty  unless  they  can  prove  their 
innocence ;  and  that  the  better  the  reputation  of 
such  a  prison  is,  the  worse  is  its  actual  administra- 
tion likely  to  be. 

I  have  in  mind,  for  example,  one  Eastern  prison 
where  the  contract  system  has  operated  undisturbed 
for  many  years.  The  warden  of  the  institution  is 
a  leading  penologist.  He  is  a  prominent  member 
of  the  American  Prison  Association.  He  has  the 
solid  support  of  press,  pulpit  and  public  in  his  State. 
Yet  I  venture  to  predict,  on  the  basis  of  certain 
evidence  now  in  my  possession,  that  if  the  Gov- 
ernor of  that  State  should  appoint,  tomorrow,  a 
committee  consisting,  let  us  say,  of  the  deans  of 
the  political  science  faculties  of  Harvard  and  Yale, 
one  or  two  perfectly  upright  prison  officials  of  the 


66  Prison    Problems 

stamp  of  Superintendent  Leonard  of  the  Ohio  Re- 
formatory, and  two  or  three  well-known  men  of 
the  State;  and  if  the  Governor  or  the  Legislature 
should  give  this  committee  the  power  to  examine 
witnesses  under  oath,  to  audit  the  prison  records, 
and  to  make  a  thorough  physical  probe  of  the  prison 
— I  venture  to  predict  that  this  committee  would, 
in  the  course  of  a  week's  investigation,  uncover  a 
nest  of  horror  which  would  make  the  community 
gasp. 

The  reader  who  has  followed  the  story  to  this 
point  has  probably  asked  himself  more  than  once : 
"If  this  is  a  true  picture  of  prison  life,  why  do  the 
men  endure  it  all?  They  are  strong,  desperate  men; 
why  don't  they  revolt?  Why  don't  they  burn  the 
prison  down?  Why  don't  they  kill  their  keepers — 
or  themselves?" 

The  answer  is  simpler  than  one  would  imagine. 
In  the  first  place,  the  average  convict,  like  the  aver- 
age human  being,  does  not  expect  to  share  the  gen- 
eral fate.  He  knows  that  others  are  punished  and 
even  tortured.  Scarcely  a  day  passes  without  a 
whisper  of  it  reaching  him,  in  the  voiceless  lan- 
guage which  convicts  employ.  But  he  invents  a 
dozen  reasons  to  explain  to  his  own  satisfaction 
why  they  deserved  what  they  got  and  why  he 
won't  get  it.  And  when  his  turn  comes  he  is  as- 
tounded. 

In  the  second  place,  most  convicts  are  not  des- 
perate men.  On  the  contrary,  the  average  convict  is 
the  most  docile,  spiritless  creature  in  the  wide  world. 
We  must  remember  that  of  the  great  army  of  law- 
breakers it  is  only  the  failures  who  land  in  prison  ; 
and  this  consciousness  of  failure  crushes  the  con- 


Prison    Problems  67 

vict's  spirit  even  more  than  does  the  iron  routine 
of  the  prison. 

The  tradition  of  the  "bad  man"  which  rules  the 
popular  attitude  toward  the  convict  is  both  false 
and  foolish.  It  is  fostered,  largely,  by  two  agencies, 
neither  of  which  is  altogether  disinterested.  One 
of  these  is  the  police ;  the  other  is  the  daily  press. 
The  police  make  their  bread  and  butter  by  the  pose 
of  social  defense.  It  is  true  that  many  police  and 
prison  officials  are  sincere  in  their  simple  convic- 
tion that  society,  were  it  not  for  brass  buttons, 
would  instantly  revert  to  barbarism ;  the  majority, 
however,  understand  their  place  fairly  well  and  are 
not  above  trading  upon  the  fears  of  the  timid  citi- 
zen deliberately,  with  an  eye  to  increased  appropria- 
tions. The  newspapers,  on  the  other  hand,  foster 
the  "bad  man"  tradition  indirectly,  and  perhaps  in- 
nocently. 

It  is  only  the  more  sensational  crimes  that  have 
sufficient  news  value  to  justify  "scareheads"  or 
prominent  mention  otherwise.  But  the  average 
reader  does  not  realize  this.  He  is  fed,  daily,  on 
the  exceptional  in  crime,  and  ends  by  accepting  it 
as  the  rule.  Therefore  he  finally  grows  to  associate 
all  criminals  with  sensational  deeds  of  daring  or 
cruelty,  forgetting  that  for  every  crime  which  is 
striking  enough  to  be  "played  up"  on  the  front 
page  of  his  paper  there  are  a  thousand  drab,  stupid, 
foolish,  cowardly  crimes  which  are  too  inane  to  get 
an  inch  of  space  in  the  most  obscure  corner  of  the 
sheet.  Yet  it  is  the  perpetrators  of  these  who  are, 
as  a  rule,  the  inmates  of  our  prisons. 

When  a  superior  criminal  does,  by  a  fluke,  land  in 
prison  one  of  two  things  happens  immediately. 


68  Prison    Problems 

Either  he  is  broken  by  the  routine  and  becomes 
as  spiritless  as  the  rest  or  he  worms  himself  into 
the  ring  which  rules  the  prison  and  himself  becomes 
a  force  for  law  and  order.  In  either  event  he  knows 
that  to  attempt  escape  or  mutiny  is  foolish ;  for 
success  in  either  is,  as  a  rule,  followed  by  recapture 
or  defeat. 

It  is  the  common  realization  of  this,  rather  than 
the  discipline  of  the  prison,  which  makes  concerted 
mutiny  impossible. 

Concerted  mutiny  is  doomed  to  failure;  but  indi- 
vidual revolts  are  equally  futile.  Nevertheless, 
there  arise,  occasionally,  men  of  heroic  frame  who 
resist  to  the  end.  These  are  probably  recorded  in 
the  physician's  report  as  victims  of  heart  disease  or 
fever.  Some  men  will  even  mutilate  themselves  in 
order  to  escape  the  daily  task.  This  is  mentioned 
casually  in  many  a  prison  report.  In  Missouri,  for 
example,  where  the  contractors  have  full  control, 
the  report  of  the  State  Bureau  of  Labor  for  1909  re- 
marks that  "Some  deliberately  maimed  themselves 
by  placing  fingers  under  cutters  or  against  fast-mov- 
ing circular  saws,  to  escape  the  daily  task."  But 
these  poor  creatures  miscalculated  sadly.  They  were 
simply  turned  over  to  a  shoe-findings  contractor  for 
twenty  cents  a  day  less  than  the  standard  price. 
In  some  States  the  cripples  and  defectives  are  sold 
for  half  price.  Nowhere  do  they  escape  the  task; 
for  the  institution  which  is  run  by  the  contract 
system  cannot  afford  to  trade  fingers  for  freedom. 


Prison    Problems  69 

THE  CONTRACT  SYSTEM. 

By  Charles  Edward  Russell. 

As  a  general  rule,  subject,  of  course,  to  some  ex- 
ceptions and  modifications,  where  there  is  contract 
labor  there  is  corporal  punishment;  where  there  is 
no  contract  labor  there  is  no  corporal  punishment. 

In  these  days,  therefore,  corporal  punishment  sur- 
vives not  for  reasons  of  discipline,  because  disci- 
pline is  maintained  easily  enough  without  it,  but 
to  extract  from  the  prisoners  the  profits  of  specula- 
tors in  misfortune.  And  the  men  that  are  subjected 
to  the  unspeakable  degradation  and  pain  of  the  lash 
suffer  not  so  much  for  their  own  misbehavior  as 
for  the  greed  of  those  into  whose  hands  the  punish- 
ment of  our  stumblers  was  never  legally  committed. 

Long  ago  I  suspected  this  to  be  the  fact;  now  1 
am  sure  of  it.  Lest  there  be  doubt  of  this  detestable 
fruit  of  a  vicious  system,  I  refer  the  incredulous 
to  the  evidence  that  lies  in  the  geographical  distri- 
bution of  the  evil.  They  will  find  that  corporal 
punishment  and  brutality  are  at  the  worst  where 
the  contract  system  is  most  absolute  (as  in  the 
loathsome  convict  camps  of  Alabama)  and  lessen 
as  the  contract  system  lessens,  until  all  disappear 
together  in  a  modern  reformatory  like  Fort  Leaven- 
worth. 

The  hearts  of  men  are  not  naturally  cruel ;  cruelty 
is  the  offspring  of  greed,  and  greed  is  born  of  the 
social  system  that  enables  the  strong  to  prey  upon 
the  weak  and  one  man  to  live  upon  another's  toil. 


70  Prison    Problems 


PROFIT  IN  PRISON  LABOR. 

Leslie  M.  Shaw  was  four  years  Governor  of  Iowa. 
He  was  for  six  years  a  member  of  the  President's 
cabinet  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  He  is  at 
present  the  influential  president  of  the  First  Mort- 
gage Guarantee  and  Trust  Company  of  Philadel- 
phia; also  chairman  of  the  board  of  directors  of 
the  American  Fibre  Reed  Company.  With  Mr. 
Shaw,  politics  is  politics  and  business  is  business. 

We  have  received  a  copy  of  a  recent  prospectus 
of  the  American  Fibre  Reed  Company,  enumerating 
the  advantages  under  which  it  operates,  announcing 
its  plans  for  increased  output,  and  offering  $200,000 
of  its  preferred  stock  at  par  to  the  public. 

Mr.  Shaw's  prospectus  is  impressive.  It  says : 
"The  American  Fibre  Reed  Company  manufactures 
fibre  and  reed  furniture  with  prison  labor.  Its  fac- 
tories are  located  inside  prison  walls  and  it  has,  at 
the  present  time,  800  prisoners  under  contract  in 
Maine,  Illinois  and  Kentucky.  Prison  contracts  are 
usually  made  for  eight  years  and  generally  con- 
tinue indefinitely.  This  company  pays  for  its  labor 
52  cents  per  man  per  day;  its  competitors  who 
employ  free  labor  pay  an  average  wage  of  about 
$2.00  per  day." 

"There  are  no  strikes  or  labor  troubles  in  prisons. 
This  company  is  supplied  free  of  rent  with  factory 
buildings,  storage  warehouses  and  grounds  inside 
the  prison  walls,  and  with  free  heat,  light'and  power. 
To  acquire  similar  facilities  as  this  company  has 
obtained  free  with  its  contracts  would  necessitate 


Prison    Problems  71 

an  additional  investment  of  approximately  $1,000,- 
000.  Having  to  make  no  investment  for  factory 
buildings,  storage  warehouses,  heat,  light  or  power, 
the  company's  funds  are  kept  actively  engaged  in 
liquid  assets  such  as  raw  materials,  finished  goods, 
and  accounts  receivable.  These  are  ideal  conditions 
for  profitable  manufacturing." 

"Dividends  of  7  per  cent  on  the  preferred  and 
10  per  cent  on  the  common  stock  are  strongly  as- 
sured ;  in  fact,  the  company  expects  its  net  earnings 
to  be  double  these  dividend  requirements." 

"The  company's  experience  and  organization 
enables  it  to  obtain  these  contracts  and  advantages 
in  preference  to — other  manufacturers  of  fibre  and 
reed  furniture  who  have  not  had  prison  experience." 

"The  demand  for  fibre  and  reed  furniture,  having 
grown  so  rapidly,  the  company  has  decided  to  double 
its  output.  This  should  give  it  control  of  about  65 
per  cent  of  the  fibre  and  50  per  cent  of  the  reed 
business  in  the  United  States." 

Meanwhile  the  movement  against  contract  prison 
labor  is  gaining  headway.  The  states  are  beginning 
to  awaken  to  the  evils  and  injustice  of  exploiting 
prisoners  for  private  profit.  Twenty-one  states 
passed  laws  designed  to  protect  imprisoned  men 
and  women  from  being  used  as  cheap  labor  to  pile 
up  dividends  for  favored  manufacturers.  Not  one 
state  legislated  to  give  new  powers  of  leasing  or 
contracting  for  the  labor  of  prisoners,  and  one  only, 
Idaho,  extended  the  field  of  its  present  leases. 

What  Mr.  Shaw's  company  offers  is  undoubtedly 
attractive  to  capital  seeking  high  earnings  and  little 
risk.  It  is  what  is  known  as  a  "cinch."  But  is  it  not 
also  an  object  lesson?  Does  it  not  emphasize  the 


72  Prison    Problems 

public  duty  of  protecting  our  prisoners  from  such 
exploitation  for  the  private  enrichment  of  a  few 
manufacturers ;  like  those,  for  example,  whose  "ex- 
perience and  organization"  enable  them  to  get  the 
cheap  prison  labor  and  the  free  light,  power,  heat 
and  space,  away  from  competitors  with  less  of  such 
"prison  experience?" — Reprinted  from  La  Follette's 
Magazine. 


PRISONERS  SHARING  PROFITS. 

F.  H.  Tracy,  Sheriff  of  Washington  County,  Vt. 

"The  work  commenced  under  a  prison  labor  law 
passed  by  the  legislature  of  this  state  in  1906,  the 
intent  of  the  law  being  to  work  men  under  guards. 
We  tried  this  method  for  some  months,  but  with 
poor  success,  the  men  doing  as  little  as  possible 
and  with  poor  results.  Finally,  in  the  spring  of 
that  year,  I  commenced  the  plan  of  giving  the  men 
a  part  of  their  earnings.  In  other  words,  I  gave 
them  all  they  earned  above  one  dollar  per  day,  and 
the  result  has  been  wonderful.  The  men  all  have 
to  work  as  laborers,  no  matter  what  has  been  their 
calling.  We  have  had  many  a  man  support  his 
family  from  his  earnings  while  serving  time.  The 
men  go  to  their  day's  work  like  any  ordinary 
laborer,  sometimes  five  or  six  together,  and  some- 
times alone,  working  cheerfully  and  saving  their 
wages  and  contented.  Surely  the  time  is  fully  ripe 
when  every  state  should  give  those  confined  a  part 
of  their  earnings.  This  means  better  work  and  re- 
lieves many  innocent  people  of  the  disgrace  of 
charity." 


Prison    Problems  73 


GOOD  ROADS  BUILT  WITH  PRISON 
LABOR. 

By  Warden  T.  J.  Tynan. 

In  four  years  we  have  built  about  1,000  miles  of 
roads  in  Colorado  with  labor  worth  $2.00  a  day, 
but  which  cost  only  28  cents.  We  now  have  300  of 
our  800  convicts  engaged  in  that  work  without 
armed  guards,  and  many  miles  away  from  the  prison 
walls.  One-hundred  more  are  employed  under  the 
same  conditions  on  the  1,500  acre  farm  of  the  prison. 
In  other  words,  50  per  cent  of  our  prisoners  are 
working  outside  the  walls.  This  system  has  spread 
in  the  last  four  years  until  it  is  now  used  with  suc- 
cess in  Oregon,  Arizona,  Utah,  Wyoming  and 
Nevada. 

We  build  approximately  $250,000  worth  of  roads 
yearly.  Prisoners  are  sent  out  to  do  the  work. 
They  form  a  camp  and  are  supervised  in  their  work 
by  a  skilled  road  man.  For  every  thirty  days  of 
good  deportment  the  prisoner  receives  ten  days  of 
"good  time."  One  prisoner  out  of  every  200  escapes. 
Before  they  are  sent  out  they  give  their  word  of 
honor  they  will  not  attempt  to  escape  and  will  pre- 
vent others  from  trying.  They  get  relatives  and 
friends  to  make  like  promises  on  their  behalf,  so 
that  when  a  man  does  escape  he  throws  down  his 
best  friends. 

The  public  is  against  the  contract  system.  The 
labor  unions  have  indorsed  the  use  of  convicts  on 
the  roads.  They  build  excellent  roads,  too. 


74  Prison    Problems 

The  old  system  of  prison  management  is  funda- 
mentally wrong  from  both  the  viewpoint  of  the 
state  and  prisoner.  Flogging  is  worse  than  futile. 
It  only  tends  to  brutalize  the  victim  and  serves  no 
useful  purpose.  I  have  used  it  only  twice  in  five 
years.  The  contract  labor  system  is  the  worst  cufsc 
of  prisons.  It  is  a  farce.  Two  favorite  industries 
for  the  contract  system  are  the  making  of  brooms 
and  shirts.  In  making  brooms  the  contractor  is 
often  robbing  the  blind,  for  many  of  them  earn  their 
living  by  making  brooms.  The  contract  system 
teaches  no  trade  to  the  prisoner,  the  state  is  cheated, 
and  the  system  is  morally  bad.  It  benefits  only  the 
contractor. 

"All  nations  seem  to  have  had  supreme  confidence 
in  the  deterrent  power  of  threatened  and  inflicted 
pain.  They  have  regarded  punishment  as  the  shorc- 
est  road  to  reformation.  Curiously  enougn,  the  fact 
is  that  no  matter  how  severe  the  punishments  were, 
they  did  not  cure  crime.  In  our  country  there  has 
been,  for  many  years,  a  growing  feeling  that  con- 
victs should  neither  be  degraded  nor  tortured.  It 
is  my  belief  that  all  the  tortures  inflicted  in  the 
modern  penitentaries  have  been  caused  through 
physical  fear,  and  when  the  average  warden  over- 
comes that  natural  fear  of  the  man  who  is  impris- 
oned, he  will  find  that  kindness  and  firmness  will 
go  further  toward  reformation  than  the  club  or 
whipping  post.  The  convict  who  is  doing  right 
should  be  encouraged.  Every  right  should  be  given 
him,  consistent  with  the  safety  of  society.  He 
should  not  be  degraded  or  robbed.  We  have  found 
that  by  working  a  certain  number  of  our  convicts 
on  the  public  highways  we  have  produced  splendid 


Prison    Problems  75 

results,  not  only  from  a  monetary  standpoint,  but 
in  the  way  of  reforming  the  men  themselves.  Sinco 
December  1,  1910,  we  have  built  over  1,000  miles  of 
good  roads.  I  hope  the  sentiment  of  the  state  will 
commend  us  to  such  a  degree  that  we  will  be  able 
to  keep  our  convicts  on  the  highways,  instead  of 
keeping  them  inside,  because  we  know  from  actual 
tests  and  experience  gathered  from  other  states  that 
ours  is  the  most  reformatory  way  of  running  a 
prison  ever  conducted  in  the  country." 


BUT  DOES  IT  PAY? 

The  man  who  gave  his  son  a  nickel  to  go  to  bed 
without  his  supper  then  charged  him  five  cents  for 
his  breakfast  had  nothing  on  these  prison  officials: 

Some  few  prisons  pay  a  small  stipend  to  those 
prisoners  who  are  actively  engaged  in  doing  the 
work  that  serves  to  make  the  institution  self-sup- 
porting. From  this  amount  the  State  deducts  the 
cost  of  keeping  the  prisoner.  One  great  State  in 
the  East  pays  its  prisoners  the  munificent  wages 
of  one  and  one-half  cents  for  each  working  day, 
irrespective  of  what  their  work  may  be,  but  even 
in  this  case  earnings  were  forfeited  for  each  in- 
fraction of  the  rules. — Editor-in-Chief  of  Good 
Words — published  in  the  United  States  penitentiary 
at  Atlanta,  Ga. 


76  Prison    Problems 

A  NEW  PURPOSE. 

By  Warden  J.  C.  Saunders. 

"Thou  shalt  not  kill"  ought  to  be  as  binding  on 
the  state  as  it  is  on  the  individual.  Why  should 
the  state  set  the  example  of  killing  a  man,  that  he 
may  pay  the  penalty  of  a  crime;  kill  another  man 
for  slaying  his  comrade?  We  seem  to  forget  that 
any  punishment  is  reserved  for  the  Almighty  to 
administer.  There  are  those  who  maintain  that  the 
murderer  should  be  killed  as  you  would  kill  a  snake 
that  bites  you.  I  believe  it  is  a  mistake  to  send  a 
man  to  the  penitentiary  for  life  on  circumstantial 
evidence.  What  is  the  logic  in  killing  a  man  who 
never  stands  alone  in  this  world,  unless  you  punish 
his  accomplice  and  furthermore  preclude  the  bad 
social  conditions  and  defective  institutions  that  tend 
to  make  him  what  he  is?  Every  instance  of  a  man's 
suffering  the  penalty  of  the  law  is  an  instance  of 
the  failure  of  that  penalty  in  effecting  its  purpose, 
which  is  to  deter.  To  break  away  from  custom 
is  always  painful,  no  matter  how  barbarous  the 
custom,  which  is  seen  more  in  what  we  bear  than 
in  what  we  enjoy;  and  yet  a  pain  long  borne  so 
fits  itself  to  our  shoulders  that  we  do  not  even  miss 
that  without  disquietude. 

Nature  never  made  an  unkind  creature ;  illusions 
and  bad  habits  have  deformed  a  fair  and  lovely  crea- 
tion. Outlawed  criminals  often  bear  more  hu- 
manity in  their  hearts  than  these  cold  blameless 
citizens  of  virtue  in  whose  white  hearts  the  power 


Prison    Problems  77 

of  evil  is  quenched,  and  also  the  power  of  good.  If  a 
man  steals  a  ride  on  a  railroad  he  is  called  a  "hobo"; 
if  he  steals  the  whole  railroad,  his  name  is  emblaz- 
oned in  history  as  a  financier.  An  outsider  was 
passing  by  the  prison  the  other  day  when  the  men 
in  the  yards  were  indulging  in  a  game  of  baseball. 
He  remarked  to  the  guard  on  the  wall :  "This  is  a 
hell  of  a  penitentiary."  That  man  had  just  sold 
fifty  cords  of  wood  that  were  three  inches  short  of 
being  four  feet  long.  Verily,  I  was  led  to  exclaim 
that  the  chief  difference  between  the  outsider  and 
the  group  on  the  inside  was  simply  the  stone  wall. 
To  close  a  man's  ears  to  the  refining  influence  of 
music  is  nothing  short  of  criminal. 

Men  must  be  inspired  with  the  idea  that  they 
are  men,  entitled  as  men  to  the  fullest  of  every 
privilege  which  they  can  only  lose  by  ceasing  to  be 
men.  Self-respect  is  recreated  at  once;  there  re- 
turns a  sense  of  personal  dignity,  and  those  are  the 
two  kinetic  forces  of  reformation." 

It  is  my  opinion  that  there  should  be  more  sys- 
tem of  earning  devised  for  the  prisoners,  that  they 
may  acquire  the  habit  of  not  only  making,  but  sav- 
ing, during  the  period  of  their  incarceration,  and  par- 
ticularly those  who  have  families  on  the  outside. 
This  would  give  them  a  working  interest  in  the  in- 
stitution, and  it  would  cultivate  the  habit  of  dili- 
gence, industry,  etc.,  such  as  we  would  want  them 
to  use  on  the  outside  when  released.  It  is  punish- 
ment of  the  most  cruel  character  to  turn  a  man 
loose  from  the  prison  with  nothing  in  his  pocket 
but  a  five  dollar  bill.  There  is  no  question  but 
that  the  matter  would  be  abused,  but  the  abuse  by 
a  few  should  not  prevent  the  rewarding  of  one  who 


78  Prison    Problems 

is  really  trying  to  make  a  man  of  what  is  left  of 
him.  Exercise,  as  I  have  said  before,  is  the  law  of 
development,  and  the  lack  of  that  habit  of  saving 
is  what  brings  many  a  fellow  in  here,  to  think 
and  ponder  over  the  past,  and  suffer.  There  is  no 
man  so  miserable  as  he  who  is  at  a  loss  how  to 
spend  his  time  in  his  cell  after  his  manual  labor  is 
over.  The  divinest  spirit  that  ever  appeared  on 
earth  has  told  us  that  the  extension  of  human  sym- 
pathy embraces  all  that  is  required  of  us  either  to 
do  or  to  foresee. 

Our  prison  lecture  course,  which  carries  with  it 
about  $1,200  worth  of  the  best  talent  on  the  lecture 
platform,  is  a  reward  that  cannot  be  measured  in  its 
influence.  The  personal  appearance  of  a  prisoner 
should  be  emphasized  by  a  respectable  suit  of 
clothes,  tailor-made,  laundered  shirts  and  polished 
shoes,  for  Sundays  and  holidays.  Now,  I  know  that 
many  laugh  at  this  proposition ;  but  when  you 
consider  that  many  of  them  have  never  had  any  of 
these  refining  influences  on  the  outside  and  have 
subordinated  their  finer  senses  to  over-indulgence 
of  passion,  it  is  worth  while  to  reward  them.  You 
cannot  make  a  man  better,  you  cannot  make  him 
think  better  or  act  better,  until  you  first  throw 
around  him  the  best  influences  there  are.  Further- 
more, it  does  not  cost  any  more  to  make  a  suit  of 
clothes  shapely  than  it  does  to  throw  it  together 
and  hang  it  on  a  prisoner  as  you  would  rags  on  a 
scarecrow. 

A  man's  food  should  be  varied,  not  with  ex- 
travagance ;  but  he  should  have  plenty  of  good 
wholesome  food.  These  men  have  eaten  with  their 
hands  in  "hobo"  clusters  out  of  troughs,  much  like 
the  swine  on  the  outside,  and  have  failed. 


Prison    Problems  79 

Ninety  per  cent  of  the  men  in  my  institution 
are  there  as  a  direct  result  of  the  booze  proposition, 
but  I  have  very  few  bartenders  who  sold  these 
ninety  per  cent  men  the  booze.  I  would  abolish 
capital  punishment,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  I  shall 
not  eventually  do  away  with  the  solitary,  except  in 
the  very  rarest  cases ;  as  I  believe  the  mental  pun- 
ishment which  a  man  gets  is  far  in  excess  and  much 
more  effective  than  any  corporal  punishment  what- 
soever. Prisons  should  be  located  in  the  country 
where  fresh  air  and  God's  out-of-doors  can  be  in- 
dulged in  to  the  limit.  Our  medical  department 
would  then  have  fifty  per  cent  less  service  to  ren- 
der. Prisoners'  health  of  course  is  a  vital  consider- 
ation. The  treatment  of  the  eye,  ear,  nose  and 
throat  is  a  revelation. 

The  beating  of  men  will  not  be  tolerated  while 
I  am  warden.  I  think  perhaps  the  most  effective 
punishment  we  have  is  taking  a  man's  good  time 
and  depriving  him  of  the  privileges  of  fellowship 
on  holidays,  and  keeping  him  out  of  the  dining- 
room  and  from  assembling  with  the  men  in  the 
yards  and  enjoying  the  little  social  privileges  that 
cost  nothing  to  give.  "Punish  parents  and  not  chil- 
dren" was  the  caption  of  a  column  in  a  daily  paper 
the  other  day.  If  I  were  a  Methodist  I  should  say 
"Amen."  May  the  Lord  save  many  children  from 
their  parents  before  they  get  in  the  ways  that  lead 
to  the  prison.  A  man  or  woman  who  brings  a  child 
into  this  world  ought  to  be  compelled  to  raise  it 
right. 

The  cry  is  punishment,  punishment,  punishment. 
Ah,  my  dear  reader.  God  knows  that  the  man  is 
punished  more  than  human  tongue  can  tell  in  the 


80  Prison    Problems 

words  "convict"  and  "ex-convict."  His  punishment 
never  leaves  him.  There  is  never  a  moment  in  the 
natural  life  of  a  man  who  has  served  in  a  prison 
which  is  free  from  punishment.  The  world  points 
its  finger  of  scorn  and  says :  "There  goes  the  'ex- 
convict'."  God  pity  the  "ex-prisoner,"  nobody  else 
does.  There  are  sufferings  that  the  world  never 
sees,  and  that  courts  and  keepers  cannot  inflict. 

Long  after  father  and  mother  have  sinned 
through  omission;  long  after  the  formative  period 
of  life  has  passed  and  nothing  but  a  wreck  and  a 
shell  is  presented  at  the  turnkey's  office ;  long 
after  the  moral  and  religious  instincts  have  been 
decultivated ;  long  after  every  influence  has  been 
brought  to  bear  to  weaken ;  long  after  the  miserable 
jails  of  Iowa  have  stung  them;  long  after  the  courts 
and  municipalities  have  given  them  the  "gravity 
kick" ;  long  after  a  few  should  have  been  sent  to 
Glenwood ;  long  after  the  inebriate  should  have  en- 
rolled elsewhere ;  long  after  some  have  become  in- 
sane; long  after  hate,  anger,  judge,  jury,  mob,  and 
prejudice  have  placed  their  "fiat,"  we  are  asked  to 
reward  and  punish.  When  we  contemplate  the 
psychology  of  a  mob  of  intelligent  people,  we  seri- 
ously doubt  our  moral  right  to  punish. 


THINK  IT  OVER. 

"We  condemn  their  bodies  to  degeneracy,  break 
their  spirit  with  iron  bars,  and,  when  their  souls 
are  black  and  cankered,  turn  them  out  again  upon 
the  world." — Gov.  George  W.  P.  Hunt,  of  Arizona. 


Prison    Problems  81 


PRISON  PROBLEMS. 

Governor  B.  F.  Carroll,  of  Iowa,  appointed  a  com- 
mittee to  investigate  prison  conditions  at  Fort  Mad- 
ison and  elsewhere.  The  committee  consisted  of 
Hon  George  Cosson,  attorney  general,  Hon.  M.  A. 
Roberts  of  Ottumwa,  who  had  long  served  upon  the 
district  bench,  and  Hon.  Parley  Sheldon,  of  Ames, 
who  has  served  as  mayor  of  his  city  for  nearly  a 
generation,  who  at  one  time  was  the  nominee  of 
his  party  for  Lieutenant  Governor.  The  committee 
made  a  long  and  valuable  report,  its  finds  and  recom- 
mendations were  unanimous.  A  few  of  them  are 
copied  here :  "Under  any  system  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  penal  institution  there  must  of  necessity 
be  loyalty,  fidelity  and  co-operation  on  the  part  of 
the  guards  and  the  subordinate  officers.  Their 
conduct  is  inextricably  connected  not  only  with  the 
general  welfare  of  a  prison,  but  also  abuses  com- 
mon to  penal  institutions. 

We  found  that  there  were  a  number  of  guards 
at  the  penitentiary  who  were  not  loyal  to  the  war- 
den, the  board  of  control,  nor  the  state.  They  were 
conniving  with  prisoners  either  through  sympathy 
or  for  gain. 

The  evidence  is  absolutely  convincing  that  a  num- 
ber of  guards  were  passing  letters  in  and  out  of 
the  institution,  and  not  only  that,  some  of  them 
were  furnishing  prisoners  with  morphine,  cocaine 
and  other  kinds  of  dope.  It  seems  to  be  generally 
accepted  that  in  a  number  of  the  penal  institutions 
of  the  country,  the  guards  themselves  traffic  in  dope, 


8'2  Prison    Problems 

and  it  is  claimed  that  many  a  young  fellow  who 
never  used  dope  when  he  entered  a  prison  left  it 
an  abject  dope  fiend.  Evidence  comes  to  this  com- 
mittee that  such  is  true  within  this  state. 

We  are  advised  that  since  the  visit  of  this  com- 
mittee to  the  institution  three  or  four  guards  have 
been  discharged.  The  committee  recommends  that 
every  guard  and  every  subordinate  officer  in  the 
penitentiary  at  Fort  Madison  who  is  either  passing 
letters,  passing  dope  or  in  any  way  planning  and 
conniving  with  prisoners  should  be  promptly  dis- 
charged. Wardens  in  other  prisons  have  attempted 
to  temporize  with  guards  of  this  character  and  sus- 
pend them  or  reprimand  them.  The  result  has 
always  been  that  the  warden  or  superintendent  has 
found  that  he  has  a  far  more  dangerous  man  in  the 
institution  in  the  person  of  the  guard  than  the  pris- 
oner himself.  In  this  regard  there  should  be  no 
expediency  or  temporizing.  Summary  and  abso- 
lute dismissal  is  the  proper  remedy.  In  this  con- 
nection the  committee  finds  that  the  general  stand- 
ard of  the  guards  at  Fort  Madison  is  not  equal  to 
the  high  standard  found  at  the  Mansfield  and  Elmira 
Reformatories  and  other  model  penal  institutions. 

It  needs  no  argument  to  demonstrate  that  a  man 
of  sufficient  education,  ability  and  character  to  prop- 
erly fill  the  responsible  position  of  guard  cannot  be 
permanently  kept  at  a  small  salary  of  fifty  or  fifty- 
five  dollars  per  month. 

No  institution  can  be  properly  managed  without 
capable,  efficient,  honest  and  loyal  guards.  There 
was  evidence  to  the  effect  that  some  of  the  em- 
ployees of  the  contractors  co-operated  with  the 
prisoners  in  passing  things  in  and  out  of  the  prison. 


Prison    Problems  83 

While  our  evidence  is  such  as  not  to  warrant  us  in 
attempting  to  designate  the  particular  employees  of 
the  contractors,  we  feel  certain  that  there  is  more 
or  less  truth  in  the  testimony,  and  that  not  only 
information  and  letters  are  conveyed  from  prisoners 
to  persons  on  the  outside,  but  that  at  least  some 
drugs  and  dope  received  by  prisoners  come  through 
that  avenue.  That  abundant  opportunities  exist  for 
these  evils  there  can  be  no  question. 

That  in  some  states,  prison  officials  of  penal  insti- 
tutions have  received  financial  benefit  from  the  con- 
tracts is  certain,  and  that  the  opportunity  exists  in 
any  event  is  beyond  question.  There  is  no  penal 
institution  in  which  the  contract  labor  system  exists 
where  prisoners  do  not  claim  that  the  officers  of 
the  institution  are  controlled  by  the  contractors, 
from  the  superintendent,  the  warden,  the  prison 
physician  down  to  the  most  subordinate  officer. 

Inasmuch  as  the  contractor  is  in  the  business  for 
profit  and  not  for  philanthropy,  there  is  a  great 
temptation  on  the  part  of  the  contractors  to  keep 
on  harmonious  relations  with  the  prison  authorities. 
This  may  be  done  in  various  ways  without  trans- 
gressing any  law,  and  perhaps  without  the  con- 
tractors realizing  that  they  are  offending  against 
anything  in  the  moral  code.  If,  however,  the  con- 
tractor is  the  kind  of  man  that  believes  in  getting 
results  and  that  the  end  justifies  the  means,  there  is 
unlimited  opportunity  for  corruption. 

A  letter  was  received  by  the  attorney  general  from 
an  inmate  in  which  he  states :  "I  have  been  deprived 
of  my  liberty  and  robbed  of  my  labor  for  years.  My 
health  and  nervous  system  are  broken  down.  I  am 
not  a  criminal  and  feel  that  I  am  held  a  slave  to 
the  contract  system." 


84  Prison    Problems 

The  saying  that  "Whenever  the  contractor  comes 
in,  the  warden  goes  out"  contains  a  sufficient  amount 
of  truth  to  prevent  it  ever  becoming  obsolete  so 
long  as  the  contract  system  is  in  use. 

As  before  stated,  the  contractor  is  in  the  business 
for  what  profit  he  can  get  out  of  it.  He  does  not 
pretend  to  be  an  educator,  a  reformer  or  philan- 
thropist. He  cannot  be  blamed  if  he  makes  long 
term  contracts  for  the  prisoners'  labor  at  from  twen- 
ty-five to  eighty  cents  a  day — at  the  penitentiary  at 
Fort  Madison  twenty-five  and  sixty  cents  per  day — 
nor  can  he  be  blamed  if  he  receives  as  much  control 
over  the  prisoners  as  possible ;  that  is  his  end  of  the 
bargain. 

The  blame  should  primarily  be  lodged  against 
the  state.  It  is  fundamentally  wrong  for  a  state  to 
exploit  prisoners  for  profit.  It  is  not  only  wrong 
but  foolish  when  this  exploitation  is  delegated  to 
some  private  corporation.  If  any  one  is  to  receive  a 
profit  it  should  be  the  state.  If  a  profit  can  be  made 
by  a  corporation  it  can  be  made  by  the  state  under 
efficient  management.  When  the  state  assumes 
control  over  an  individual  it  is  responsible  for  his 
physical  well-being  and  his  social  and  moral  wel- 
fare, but  no  one  pretends  that  a  contractor  is  con- 
cerned in  any  way  with  the  social,  moral  or  physi- 
cal welfare  of  the  prisoner.  With  the  state,  the 
primary  object  in  view  should  be  the  protection  of 
society  and  the  reformation  of  the  individual ;  with 
the  contractor  the  primary  object  is  and  always  will 
be  the  maximum  amount  of  dividends,  and  it  is  no 
answer  to  say  that  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  to 
the  federal  constitution  of  the  United  States,  in 
which  it  is  provided  that  "Neither  slavery  nor  in- 


Prison    Problems  85 

voluntary  servitude,  except  as  a  punishment  for 
crime,  whereof  the  party  shall  have  been  duly  con- 
victed, shall  exist  within  the  United  States,  or  any 
place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction"  at  least  indirect- 
ly recognizes  that  each  state  may  impose  a  form 
of  slavery  upon  its  convicts. 

The  contract  system  is  the  worst  form  of  slavery 
because  it  is  a  delegated  form  of  slavery.  Authority 
and  responsibility  should  go  hand  in  hand  but  this 
cannot  be  with  the  contract  system.  The  Outlook, 
May  4,  1912,  editorially  in  describing  the  difference 
between  the  contract  labor  system  and  slavery  as  it 
formerly  existed,  states :  "There  is,  however,  this 
important  difference  between  the  contractor's  rela- 
tion to  the  convict  and  that  of  a  master  to  his  serv- 
ant. The  master  owns  his  slave  and  hence  has  a 
selfish  interest  in  his  life,  health  and  efficiency.  The 
contractor  does  not  own  the  convict,  and  hence  has 
no  selfish  interest  in  his  physical  well-being.  If 
the  convict  dies,  it  costs  the  contractor  nothing,  and 
there  are  plenty  more  to  take^  his  place.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  a  leading  prison  contractor  once  ex- 
claimed, 'This  beats  having  slaves  all  hollow !' 
Yes,  this  modern  survival  of  slavery  has  a  great  ad- 
vantage, from  the  dollars  and  cents  point  of  view, 
over  the  old  form." 

"The  God  given  right  to  labor  should  not  be 
denied  permanently  or  for  any  considerable  period 
to  any  human  being.  Numberless  instances  could 
be  given  of  the  evil  effects  of  enforced  idleness  and 
of  solitary  confinement.  Under  an  act  of  1821,  fol- 
lowing an  experiment  in  Pennsylvania,  New  York 
adopted  a  scheme  of  grading,  which  proposed  three 
classes.  The  most  dangerous  and  impenitent  com- 


86  Prison    Problems 

posed  the  first  class,  which  was  doomed  to  constant 
confinement  in  solitary  cells  with  no  companion  but 
their  own  thoughts  and,  if  the  keeper  saw  fit,  a 
Bible.  The  second  class,  to  be  the  less  incorrigible, 
should  alternate  between  solitary  confinement  and 
labor  as  a  recreation.  The  third,  being  the  most 
hopeful,  were  to  work  in  association  by  day  and  to 
be  in  seclusion  by  night.  The  first  class  were 
separated  from  the  others  on  Christmas,  1821,  and 
consisted  of  eighty-three  of  the  most  hardened 
prisoners  who  were  committed  to  silence  and  soli- 
tude. In  less  than  a  year  five  of  the  eighty-three 
had  died,  one  became  an  idiot,  another  when  his 
door  was  opened  dashed  himself  from  the  gallery, 
and  the  rest  with  haggard  looks  and  despairing 
voices  begged  to  be  set  to  work." 

A  prison  warden  of  one  of  the  eastern  institu- 
tions who  has  held  his  present  position  for  over 
twenty-five  years,  told  the  attorney  general  of  Iowa 
that  he  could  distinguish  a  prisoner  who  had  for- 
merly served  time  in  the  Pennsylvania  penitentiary 
by  the  looks  and  actions  of  the  prisoner  without  any 
other  evidence.  This  experience,  however,  is  not 
confined  to  our  own  country. 

Mr.  Bailie-Cochrane  says:  "The  officers  at  the 
Dartmoor  prison  inform  me  that  the  prisoners  who 
arrive  there  even  after  one  year's  confinement  at 
Pentonville,  may  be  distinguished  from  the  others 
by  their  miserable  downcast  look.  In  most  instances 
the  brain  is  affected,  and  they  are  unable  to  give 
satisfactory  replies  to  the  simplest  questions." 

"The  evils  of  solitary  confinement  and  enforced 
idleness  as  described  by  prison  officials  are  clearly 
recognized  by  the  greatest  psychologists  and  phil- 


Prison    Problems  87 

osophers.  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  unusually  able  and 
prophetic  essay  on  "Prison  Ethics"  after  condemn- 
ing the  solitary  system  said :  ''Our  own  objection 
to  such  methods,  however,  has  always  been,  that 
their  effect  on  the  moral  nature  is  the  very  reverse 
of  that  required.  Crime  is  anti-social — is  prompted 
by  self-regarding  feelings,  and  checked  by  social 
feelings.  The  natural  prompter  of  right  conduct  to 
others,  and  the  natural  opponent  of  misconduct  to 
others,  is  sympathy ;  for  out  of  sympathy  grow  both 
the  kindly  emotions,  and  that  sentiment  of  justice 
which  restrains  us  from  aggressions.  Well,  this 
sympathy,  which  makes  society  possible,  is  culti- 
vated by  social  intercourse.  By  habitual  participa- 
tion in  the  pleasures  of  others,  the  faculty  is 
strengthened ;  and  whatever  prevents  this  participa- 
tion, weakens  it — an  effect  commonly  illustrated  in 
the  selfishness  of  old  bachelors.  Hence,  therefore, 
we  contend  that  shutting  up  prisoners  within  them- 
selves, or  forbidding  all  interchange  of  feeling,  in- 
evitably deadens  such  sympathies  as  they  have ;  and 
so  tends  rather  to  diminish  than  to  increase  the 
moral  check  to  transgression.  This  a  priori  convic- 
tion, which  we  have  long  entertained,  we  now  find 
confirmed  by  facts.  Captain  Maconcochie  states  as 
a  result  of  observation,  that  a  long  course  of  separa- 
tion so  fosters  the  self-regarding  desires,  and  so 
weakens  the  sympathies,  as  to  make  even  well-dis- 
posed men  very  unfit  to  bear  the  little  trials  of 
domestic  life  on  their  return  to  their  homes.  Thus 
there  is  good  reason  to  think  that,  while  silence  and 
solitude  may  cow  the  spirit  or  undermine  the  ener- 
gies, it  cannot  produce  true  reformation." 

This  is  precisely  in  accordance  with  the  conclu- 


88  Prison    Problems 

sions  of  the  late  Professor  William  James  of  Har- 
vard set  forth  in  his  psychology  on  page  179  in 
which  he  speaks  of  the  effect  of  depriving  a  human 
being  of  his  social  relation  with  his  fellow  man, 
and  says: 

"No  more  fiendish  punishment  could  be  devised, 
were  such  a  thing  physically  possible,  than  that  one 
should  be  turned  loose  in  society  and  remain  ab- 
solutely unnoticed  by  all  the  members  thereof.  If 
no  one  turned  around  when  we  entered,  answered 
when  we  spoke,  or  minded  what  we  did,  but  if  every 
person  we  met  'cut  us  dead,'  and  acted  as  if  we 
were  non-existing  things,  a  kind  of  rage  and  impo- 
tent despair  would  ere  long  well  up  in  us,  from  which 
the  cruellest  bodily  tortures  would  be  relief;  for 
these  would  make  us  feel  that,  however  bad  might 
be  our  plight,  we  had  not  sunk  to  such  a  depth  as  to 
be  unworthy  of  attention  at  all." 

Emphasis  has  been  placed  upon  the  evil  effect  of 
both  the  solitary  confinement  and  enforced  idleness 
because  it  even  now  forms  so  large  a  part  of  our 
penal  system.  Especially  is  this  true  with  the  pun- 
ishment meted  out  to  misdemeanants.  The  state  in 
eliminating  one  evil  should  not  cause  a  still  greater 
evil.  There  is  conclusive  evidence,  however,  that 
a  substitute  or  substitutes  for  contract  labor  can  be 
found  which  is  superior  from  every  view  point  to 
that  of  contract  labor.  In  other  words,  we  believe 
that  contract  labor  can  be  entirely  abolished  from 
our  penal  institutions  and  that  our  institutions  can 
be  so  managed  that  every  person  confined  may  be 
profitably  employed  at  productive  labor  during  every 
working  day,  and  we  believe  that  there  is  something 
radically  wrong  in  any  institution  where  any  con- 


Prison    Problems  89 

siderable  number  of  able  bodied  men  are  in  idleness 
or  where  any  individual  capable  of  labor  is  kept  in 
idleness  for  any  considerable  period  of  time. 

Enforced  idleness  is  not  only  a  crime  against  the 
prisoner  and  his  family,  but  it  is  economic  idiocy, 
and  this  is  true  whether  the  idleness  is  a  part  of 
our  system  of  punishment  of  felons  or  misdemean- 
ants ;  in  other  words,  whether  it  is  a  part  of  the 
penitentiary  system  or  a  part  of  the  jail  system,  ex- 
cept where  the  jail  is  used  merely  as  a  place  of 
detention. 

Prof.  Charles  R.  Henderson  of  Chicago,  United 
States  commissioner  of  International  Prison  Com- 
mission, says  in  his  introduction  to  Outdoor  Labor 
for  Convicts :  "The  whole  question  of  occupation 
of  convicts  is  connected  with  that  of  the  reform  of 
our  jail  system,  which,  by  the  unanimous  consent  of 
all  competent  students  is  the  most  vicious  and  cor- 
rupt agency  connected  with  our  penal  system.  The 
essential  evil  of  the  ordinary  county  jail  does  not 
lie  merely  in  its  unsanitary  condition,  bad  as  that 
often  is,  for  this  can  be  corrected  by  health  author- 
ities. The  worst  of  the  jail  method  is  that  it  in- 
volves idleness  and  base  companionship.  It  is  idle- 
ness which  corrupts  young  men,  especially  when 
the  unoccupied  time  is  spent  with  depraved  com- 
pany. There  is  a  large  class  of  low-bred,  degenerate, 
alcoholic  rounders  who  are  now  required  to  serve 
short  sentences  for  drunkenness  or  disorder  and 
who  are  made  worse  by  the  treatment  given  them 
under  present  laws." 

The  fee  system  connected  with  our  jail  system 
is  absolutely  indefensible  and  should  be  abolished 
by  the  next  general  assembly. 


90  Prison    Problems 

Mr.  Paul  U.  Kellogg,  in  reporting  the  proceedings 
of  the  International  Prison  Congress  at  Washing- 
ton, in  the  Survey  of  November  5,  1910,  in  speaking 
of  this  question  states  that  the  imprisonment  of  all 
persons  awaiting  trial  and  those  under  sentence  for 
minor  offenses  has  been  left  in  the  hands  of  counties 
and  states,  and  says:  "The  fees  to  be  gained  by 
their  arrest,  detention,  feeding  and  incarceration 
during  the  period  of  sentence,  have  made  the 
sheriff's  office  the  center  of  county  politics  and  in 
some  localities,  a  more  lucrative  post  than  that  of 
president  of  the  United  States." 

A  system  whereby  a  sheriff  has  a  distinct,  per- 
sonal, financial  gain  in  the  arrest  and  confinement  of 
prisoners,  and  no  interest  whatsoever  in  their  refor- 
mation is  vicious  and  capable  of  no  defense. 

That  being  true,  we  agree  with  Prof.  Chas.  R. 
Henderson  that  mere  "petty  tinkering  with  the 
present  methods  is  absurd  and  is  a  waste  of  time, 
money  and  manhood,"  and  that  "this  evil  cannot  be 
corrected  so  long  as  the  ordinary  place  for  serving 
short  sentences  is  a  county  institute.  The  jail 
should  be  reserved  simply  for  prisoners  presumably 
innocent,  but  held  for  trial.  A  convicted  person 
should  at  once  be  sent  to  a  district  prison  of  some 
kind  and  placed  under  state  control  until  he  is  re- 
stored to  freedom." 

And  we  also  agree  with  Sir  Evelyn  Ruggles  Brise 
that  "America  cannot  help  Europe  solve  the  prob- 
lem of  dealing  with  misdemeanants  until  we  recog- 
nize that  the  petty  offender  is  as  much  a  matter  for 
state  concern  and  control  as  the  man  under  long  and 
indeterminate  sentence." 

Abundance  of  evidence  from  our  own  state  which 


Prison    Problems  91 

is  within  the  possession  and  knowledge  of  this  com- 
mittee makes  it  absolutely  imperative  that  we  should 
entirely  eliminate  the  county  jail  in  so  far  as  it  is 
used  as  a  place  of  confinement  or  punishment  of  a 
person  convicted  of  crime,  and  that  in  all  such  in- 
stances the  offender  should,  in  the  event  that  he 
has  violated  a  state  law  and  sentenced  to  confine- 
ment, be  sent  to  some  district  penal  institution  un- 
der the  absolute  jurisdiction  and  control  of  the  state 

Hugh  C.  Weir  in  the  World  To-day  for  January, 
1910,  states  that  a  man  was  sentenced  to  the  Phila- 
delphia city  prison  201  times  for  the  same  offense. 

The  records  of  the  Detroit  House  of  Correction 
show  one  man  to  have  been  committed  112  times ; 
another,  59  times ;  another,  58  times ;  another,  57 ; 
another,  40;  and  so  on  down. 

We  are  informed  by  police  officers  in  the  city  of 
Des  Moines  that  Polk  county  has  one  citizen  who 
has  been  sentenced  on  an  average  of  from  five  to 
ten  times  a  year  during  the  past  fifteen  years;  and 
one  year  this  individual  was  committed  to  the  city 
or  county  jail  seventeen  times.  It  goes  without 
saying  that  any  law  under  which  it  is  possible  for 
a  man  to  serve  seventeen  sentences  in  a  year,  and 
an  average  of  from  five  to  ten  every  year,  and  from 
100  to  200  in  a  life  time  is  both  archaic  and  vicious. 

The  amount  of  money  annually  spent  in  punish- 
ing intoxication  and  inebriety  and  the  resultant 
evils  inflicted  upon  the  offenders'  families  by  reason 
of  the  present  foolish  and  vicious  form  of  punish- 
ment is  far  greater  than  the  public  generally  real- 
izes. 

The  statistics  of  one  writer  show  that  one-half  of 
all  the  arrests  in  a  dozen  of  the  largest  cities  of  the 


92  Prison    Problems 

United  States  during  the  year  1909  were  for  intoxi- 
cation, and  he  states  that  during  that  year  there 
were  approximately  786,000  arrests  in  the  country, 
and  that  over  350,000  of  these  were  for  drunken 
men.  During  the  same  year  the  report  for  England 
shows  that  of  90,000  persons  who  were  committed 
to  prison  in  default  of  payment  of  fines,  over  half 
were  convicted  of  drunkenness. 

Reports  from  every  county  in  the  state  of  Iowa, 
and  special  investigations  which  have  been  made 
by  one  of  the  members  of  this  committee  in  some 
of  the  larger  cities,  show  that  the  ratio  of  arrests 
for  intoxication  as  to  the  whole  number  of  arrests  is 
about  the  same  in  Iowa  as  the  reports  for  the  United 
States  and  for  England,  that  is  to  say,  our  report 
shows  that  the  arrests  in  Iowa  for  intoxication  aver- 
age from  46  to  52  per  cent  of  the  total  number  for 
arrests,  and  in  some  communities  arrests  for  intoxi- 
cation are  60  to  65  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of 
arrests. 

Jane  Addams  and  Katherine  Bement  Davis,  Sup- 
erintendent of  the  New  York  State  Reformatory  for 
Women,  have  taught  us  that  the  scarlet  letter  may 
be  removed,  that  the  women  of  the  street  convicted 
of  immorality  are  worth  saving,  and  that  it  is  pos- 
sible to  save  them. 

Summing  up  the  evils  of  the  jail  system  now 
existing  in  Iowa,  we  cannot  do  better  than  to  adopt 
the  language  of  the  commissioners  appointed  by 
ex-president  Roosevelt  to  investigate  the  jail  system 
in  the  District  of  Columbia.  They  say : 

"The  evils  of  such  a  state  of  things  are  too 
obvious  to  call  for  or  even  justify  extended  com- 
ment. That  men  and  women  should  be  sent  to 


Prison    Problems  93 

these  narrow  and  crowded  cells,  the  innocent  with 
the  guilty,  the  first-offender  with  the  hardened 
criminal,  in  one  promiscuous  assembly,  to  corrupt 
and  be  corrupted  by  each  other,  the  lazy  to  be 
humored  and  fostered  in  their  laziness,  the  in- 
dustrious to  be  deprived  of  every  form  of  employ- 
ment, to  be  fed  like  beasts  and  maintained  at  the 
public  charge,  not  only  with  no  prospect  of  im- 
provement in  their  condition,  but  with  the  moral 
certainty  that  they  will  come  out  far  worse  than 
they  went  in,  is  a  fact  that  has  become  a  stench  in 
the  nostrils  of  the  whole  community  and  ought  to 
be  felt  as  a  shame  and  disgrace  to  the  whole  nation, 
whose  representatives  are  responsible  for  its  exist- 
ence." 

Senate  Document  648,  p.  8. 

In  view  of  these  conditions  and  the  general  de- 
fects in  our  penal  system  previously  referred  to, 
the  question  confronting  our  state  is  whether  we 
will  continue  to  cling  to  a  false  economy  and  blindly 
follow  precedent  in  our  method  of  dealing  with  the 
large  number  of  persons  annually  convicted  of 
crime,  or  whether  we  will  have  the  larger  vision  and 
adopt  a  plan  both  humane  and  scientific,  in  con- 
sonance with  the  heart,  the  character  and  the  cul- 
ture of  our  people. 

Warden  Wolfer  of  the  Minnesota  Penitentiary,  at 
Stillwater,  writes :  "Our  annual  manufacturing  ca- 
pacity is  now  approximately  eighteen  million 
pounds  of  binder  twine.  Our  mills  were  operated 
at  full  capacity  as  usual  during  the  past  two  years. 
Our  financial  statements  show  that  we  could  now 
pay  back  into  the  state  a  revolving  fund  to  carry 


94  Prison    Problems 

on  the  business,  and  still  have  left  a  net  clear  profit 
of  $1,570,992." 

The  United  States  commissioner  of  labor  reports 
that  there  has  been  a  saving  to  the  farmers  of  three 
cents  a  pound  on  binder  twine,  which  saving  in 
view  of  the  amount  manufactured  and  sold  to  the 
farmers  of  Minnesota  amounts  to  $5,081,190. 

"I  also  call  attention  to  the  farm  machinery  plant ; 
after  taking  a  careful,  conservative  inventory  of  our 
assets,  we  show  under  the  head  of  profit  and  loss,  a 
developing  expense  of  $42,057.42." 

"In  my  opinion  the  farm  is  the  solution  of  the 
labor  proposition  in  the  employment  of  convicts. 
It  is  out  in  the  open,  gives  recreation  and  the  work 
is  varied.  You  can  always  find  something  to  do 
for  most  any  prisoner  on  the  farm  whether  he  be 
weak  or  strong.  Our  farm  contains  7,000  acres,  is 
divided  into  two  camps  or  stations  and  each  is 
well  equipped  with  dwellings  for  supervisors  and 
guards,  good  cell  houses  and  splendid  hospitals. 
We  have  a  large  brick  plant  on  the  grounds,  but  it 
is  not  being  operated  now.  Of  course  when  we 
operate  this,  our  population  will  average  about  two- 
hundred.  There  seems  to  be  nothing  that  would 
especially  distinguish  it  from  other  prison  manage- 
ment, except  possibly  the  farm  feature,  which  has 
been  a  part  of  our  work  for  about  twenty  years. 
However,  I  have  observed  recently  that  prison 
management  generally  are  turning  to  the  farm  for 
employment  of  prisoners  and  no  doubt  will  find  it 
wholesome  occupation  and  profitable  to  prisoner 
as  well  as  to  the  management." 

Governor  George  W.  Donaghey  of  Arkansas,  re- 
ferring to  the  success  of  the  state  penal  farm  in 


Prison    Problems  95 

his  message  to  the  legislature  in  1911,  said:  "We 
have  on  the  state  farm  2,700  acres  of  open  land. 
When  we  took  charge  of  the  penitentiary  two  years 
ago,  and  before  we  could  make  a4  move  to  earn  any- 
thing for  its  maintenance,  we  found  it  was  in  debt 
in  the  sum  of  about  $130,000.  $99,000  was  appro- 
priated by  the  legislature  out  of  the  general  revenue 
fund  for  the  payment  in  part  of  that  debt.  The 
balance  remaining  unpaid  was  left  to  the  board  to 
work  out.  The  first  year,  1909,  we  bought  supplies 
on  credit,  paying  what  our  creditors  chose  to  charge 
us,  and  we  not  only  paid  the  debt  to  which  we 
fell  heir,  but  made  enough  money  over  and  above 
all  expenses  to  pay  $30,000  of  the  state's  farm  debt, 
and  turned  back  into  the  general  revenue  fund 
$50,000.  For  the  past  year  we  will  do  equally  as 
well  if  not  better.  The  greater  part  of  this  money 
was  earned  on  the  state's  farm."  Governor  Don- 
aghey  states  that  less  than  one-third  of  the  convicts 
were  used  upon  the  state  farm. 

The  state  of  Louisiana  has  purchased  for  its  penal 
institutions  fifteen  thousand  acres  of  land  at  a  cost 
of  $409,000,  there  being  six  separate  penal  farms 
ranging  from  400  to  800  acres  in  each  farm.  The 
recent  report  for  the  calendar  year  ending  1911 
shows  that  they  have  constructed  on  one  of  the 
farms  a  sugar  refinery  at  a  cost  of  nearly  $420,000, 
"all  of  which  has  been  paid  for  out  of  the  earnings 
of  the  penitentiary  during  the  fiscal  period,  except 
$170,671.00." 

During  the  year  1911  the  report  shows  an  excess 
of  receipts  over  current  expenses,  $149,308.18.  A 
large  number  of  the  most  able-bodied  men  are  work- 
ed on  levees,  and  not  on  the  farm.  For  1912  the 


96  Prison    Problems 

report  shows  they  will  have  2,460  acres  of  corn  and 
3,160  acres  of  cane,  besides  the  other  miscellaneous 
crops  and  vegetables  sufficient  for  their  own  use 
and  also  for  sale. 

Mr.  Frank  A.  Fetter,  in  the  Survey  for  February 
4,  1911,  referring  to  the  Witzwil  farm,  Berne,  Swit- 
zerland, which  contains  2,000  acres,  states : 

"This  farming  enterprise  in  which  most  of  the 
work  is  done  by  prisoners  has  proved  to  be  a  good 
investment  for  the  canton.  There  has  been  ex- 
pended by  the  canton,  all  told,  for  land  $200,000, 
for  building  material,  $100,000,  and  other  cash  ad- 
vances (net,  after  deducting  the  so-called  rent  paid 
to  the  canton),  $50,000,  a  total  of  $350,000.  The 
present  worth  of  the  whole  plant  (land,  buildings, 
stock,  cash  fund)  is  at  a  low  estimate  $550,000,  an 
average  gain  for  the  time  the  institution  has  been 
in  full  operation  of  over  $13,000  a  year.  While  the 
care  of  the  200  (sometimes  over  250)  prisoners  is 
without  cost  to  the  public,  the  actual  outlay  on 
new  buildings  and  equipment  has  amounted  to  a 
good  return  on  the  investment  in  grounds  and  build- 
ings. Yet  this  has  been  done  without  the  lease  or 
the  contract  systems  of  labor,  and  with  no  injurious 
competition  with,  or  protests  from,  free  labor.  With- 
in the  last  year  the  land  has  at  length  been  brought 
fairly  under  cultivation,  so  that  it  would  seem  that 
the  results  in  the  future  would  be  still  more  favor- 
able." 

Director  Kellerhals  in  his  report  states  that  the 
open  air  employment  has  a  peculiar  value  both 
upon  the  health  and  the  reformation  of  the  individ- 
ual. He  states  that  much  of  the  work  done  in 
closed  prisons  is  of  no  value  to  the  prisoner  upon 


Prison    Problems  97 

his  return  to  society,  but  that  "The  conditions  are 
quite  otherwise  in  an  'establishment  in  the  open 
air/  as  Dr.  Goos  of  Copenhagen,  calls  ours.  Not 
only  can  a  debilitated  young  man  recuperate  better 
and  much  more  rapidly  than  in  the  unhealthy  at- 
mosphere of  the  workshop,  but  he  can  there  acquire 
in  less  time  the  practical  knowledge  which  is  de- 
manded of  a  well-paid  workman.  Agricultural  es- 
tablishments are  especially  helpful  to  those  prison- 
ers who,  after  having  undergone  a  long  sentence, 
approach  the  end  of  their  term." 

The  reason  given  for  this  is  because  of  the  me- 
chanical routine  of  the  ordinary  prison.  He  there- 
fore states :  "We  cannot  do  better  than  to  re-awak- 
en this  interest  in  them  and  prepare  them  for  the 
struggle  for  existence  which  awaits  them,  than  to 
make  them  pass  the  last  period  of  their  imprison- 
ment in  a  penal  agricultural  colony.  Agricultural 
work  more  than  any  other  occupation  makes  it 
possible  to  keep  an  eye  on  lazy  men.  They  are 
placed  in  a  work  group  and  they  must  keep  up  with 
their  comrades.  That  is  why  the  agricultural  col- 
onies are  a  horror  to  vagabonds  and  notorious  slug- 
gards, while  the  good  workers  find  themselves  rela- 
tively happy  there." 


98  Prison    Problems 


EXCERPTS  FROM  CHICAGO'S  VICE 
COMMISSION  REPORT. 

"The  first  truth  that  the  commission  desires  to 
impress  upon  the  citizens  of  Chicago  is  the  fact 
that  prostitution  in  this  city  is  a  commercialized 
business  of  large  proportions,  with  tremendous 
profits  of  more  than  $15,000,000  per  year,  controlled 
largely  by  men,  not  women.  Separate  the  male  ex- 
ploiter from  the  problem,  and  we  minimize  its  ex- 
tent and  abate  its  flagrant  outward  expression. 

"In  juxtaposition  with  this  group  of  professional 
male  exploiters  stand  ostensibly  respectable  citi- 
zens, both  men  and  women,  who  are  openly  rent- 
ing and  leasing  property  for  exorbitant  sums,  and 
thus  sharing,  thru  immorality  of  investments,  the 
profits  from  this  business,  a  business  which  de- 
mands a  supply  of  5,000  souls  from  year  to  year 
to  satisfy  the  lust  and  greed  of  men  in  this  city 
alone." 

"First  offenders,  especially,  instead  of  being  fined 
or  imprisoned,  should  be  placed  on  probation 
under  the  care  of  intelligent  and  sympathetic  wo- 
men officially  connected  with  the  court.  Old  and 
hardened  offenders  should  be  sent  to  an  industrial 
farm  with  hospital  accommodations  on  an  inde- 
terminate sentence.  Obviously,  it  is  necessary  that 
some  such  measures  of  almost  drastic  control  should 
obtain  if  such  women  are  to  be  permanently  helped 
and  society  served." 

There  is  a  protected  and  flourishing  "vice  trust" 
robbing  the  people  yearly  of  $60,000,000,  destroy- 


Prison    Problems  99 

ing  the  souls  and  bodies  of  five  thousand  girls,  and 
spreading  disease,  debauchery  and  degeneracy 
throughout  every  corner  of  the  city.  The  systema- 
tized official  graft  from  this  curse  of  Christendom 
amounts,  at  the  lowest  conservative  estimate  of 
the  leading  daily  press  of  Chicago,  to  nearly  $700,- 
000  every  year. 

A  code  of  "regulations"  boldly  adopted  by  the 
police  department,  with  the  sanction  of  the  mayor 
and  his  party  backers,  deliberately  setting  aside 
both  state  laws  and  city  ordinances  on  this  great 
evil,  and  sustaining  a  system  of  so-called  "segre- 
gated" vice,  the  chief  purpose  of  which  appears  to 
be  the  maintenance  of  graft  and  the  perpetuation 
of  the  "white  slave"  traffic. 

An  organized  influence  of  vice  and  drink  so 
powerful  as  to  dictate  instant  rejection  by  the 
political  leaders  and  officials  of  the  carefully  out- 
lined proposals  for  the  total  suppression  of  the 
social  evil,  presented  by  the  Vice  Commission. 

The  Chicago  grand  jury  probe,  July  19,  1909,  dis- 
covered that : 

1.  A   network  of  vice   protection   extends   over 
nearly  all  of  Chicago. 

2.  Tribute  is  paid  by  nearly  every  denizen  of 
the  "underworld,"  and  an  elaborate  system  of  col- 
lecting this  money  is  in  vogue. 

3.  An  elaborate  "vice  trust"  exists  on  the  West 
Side,  and  thru  this  "trust"  tribute  is  levied  upon 
the  resort-keepers. 

4.  The  heads  of  this  "vice  trust"   are  wealthy 
saloonkeepers  and  ward  politicians. 

5.  The  "vice  trust"  wields  so  strong  a  power  that 
witnesses  are  afraid  to  testify  against  any  of  its 
members. 


100  Prison    Problems 

"How  can  these  unfortunate  women  be  helped 
and  saved  to  society?  Some  well-meaning  persons 
declare  that  they  should  be  left  to  their  fate;  that 
they  are  criminals,  and  should  be  treated  as  such. 
The  commission  does  not  feel  that  this  is  an  answer 
to  the  problem.  They  are  human  beings  still, 
stumbling  for  a  time  in  the  depths  of  sin  and  shame, 
but  notwithstanding  how  low  they  have  sunken  in 
the  social  scale,  they  can  be  rescued  if  by  some 
method  they  can  be  made  to  feel  the  touch  of  divine 
sympathy  and  human  love. 

"No  doubt,  during  the  coming  months  many  of 
these  women,  now  in  houses,  and  in  the  streets,  and 
in  the  saloons,  will  be  cut  loose  from  their  sur- 
roundings by  the  effective  operation  of  the  law. 
Some  wise  provision  must  be  made  to  help  them. 
To  put  them  in  prison,  with  no  provision  for  their 
spiritual  or  physical  needs,  would  only  tend  to 
degrade  them  still  lower  and  send  them  back  to 
a  life  of  shame  in  some  other  community  in  a  worse 
condition  than  they  were  before. 


Prison    Problems  101 


WHERE  CRIME  IS  A  PROFESSION. 

By  Abraham  H.  Sarasohn. 

Eminent  Criminal  Lawyer  of  New  York. 

The  criminal  law  has  proved  inefficient  to  cope 
with  the  growing  element  of  law-breakers.  Not- 
withstanding popular  notions,  the  professional 
criminals  of  our  large  cities  are  seldom  caught,  and 
if  caught  are  rarely  punished.  Their  safety  from 
detection  and  apprehension  is  due  to  an  inefficient 
police  system,  while  their  relative  security  from 
punishment  even  when  arrested  is  founded  upon  an 
archaic  and  utterly  deficient  machinery  of  criminal 
law  procedure. 

As  a  result  of  this  situation  crime  has  become 
a  paying  profession.  There  are  in  New  York  city, 
and,  by  parity  of  causative  reasoning,  in  every  one 
of  our  cities  of  first  rate  size  as  well,  thousands  of 
persons  who  earn  a  comfortable  and  in  many  cases 
luxurious  living  by  following  a  criminal  career  year 
in  and  year  out. 

The  entire  success  and  prosperity  of  the  criminal 
classes  depend  upon  their  ability  to  keep  immune 
from  interference  or  arrest  by  the  police,  and  to 
escape  punishment  when  arrested.  In  our  large 
cities  the  criminal  classes  are  notoriously  successful 
in  escaping  punishment  even  when  arrested,  through 
the  many  loopholes  and  defects  of  our  antiquated 
criminal  law  procedure. 

Such  an  alarmingly  small  percentage  of  profes- 
sional criminals  caught  in  the  toils  of  the  law  is 


102  Prison    Problems 

convicted  and  punished  that  the  average  criminal 
feels  perfectly  safe  and  secure  from  conviction.  The 
chances  of  a  lawbreaker  suffering  punishment  by 
conviction  are  not  much  greater  than  the  hazard 
the  average  workingman  takes  of  suffering  personal 
injury  in  his  trade.  To  this  amazingly  slight  ratio 
of  risk  such  criminal  statistics  as  are  available  bear 
eloquent  testimony. 

Few  crimes  are  committed  overtly.  To  hide 
itself  is  of  the  nature  of  crime,  which  precludes  the 
idea  of  any  records  or  statistics  of  crimes  com- 
mitted. Of  course  there  are  records  of  crimes  re- 
ported to  the  police  authorities,  but  these  repre- 
sent only  a  portion  of  those  actually  committed. 

But  even  the  records  of  reported  crimes  are  not 
accessible  to  the  public.  The  secretiveness  of  the 
metropolitan  police  in  this  matter  has  recently  been 
the  subject  of  severe  and  deserved  criticism.  The 
public  is  kept  unaware  of  the  percential  proportion 
of  arrests  to  the  number  of  reported  crimes. 

Following  the  rumored  "crime  wave"  in  the  early 
part  of  last  year  the  grand  jury  of  New  York  county 
made  an  extensive  investigation,  and  its  present- 
ment filed  May  17,  1911,  contains  some  figures 
from  which  a  rough  estimate  may  be  formed  of 
the  percentage  of  arrests  for  reported  crimes  in 
New  York  alone.  This  presentment  shows  that  in 
the  year  of  1910  there  were  10,288  complaints  for 
burglary  and  attempted  burglary,  and  14,091  com- 
plaints for  larceny.  This  number,  however,  is  ex- 
clusive of  the  complaints  made  at  the  police  station 
houses,  which  the  grand  jury  found  were  711  for  the 
period  between  February  27  and  April  4,  1911,  or 


Prison    Problems  103 

approximately  twenty  complaints  a  day,  or  7,300 
during  the  year. 

Adding  these  7,300  station  house  complaints  to 
the  crimes  reported  at  police  headquarters,  and  to 
the  cases  where  arrests  were  made  without  any 
previous  report  we  find  that  during  the  year  1910 
there  were  32,679  reported  cases  of  burglary  and 
larceny,  and  during  the  same  year  only  3,501  arrests 
for  those  offenses,  showing  that  in  less  than  11  per 
cent  of  reported  cases  of  burglary  and  larceny,  ar- 
rests are  made.  When  we  examine  the  printed  re- 
port of  the  police  commissioner  of  New  York 
county  we  find  a  still  more  alarming  state  of  affairs 
as  regards  the  small  percentage  of  persons  arrested 
for  serious  offenses  that  are  convicted  and  punished. 

The  report  of  the  police  commissioner  of  the  city 
of  New  York  which  covers  the  year  ended  Decem- 
'ber  31,  1910,  shows  that  during  that  year  20,377 
persons  were  arrested  within  the  greater  city  for 
felony,  but  the  convictions  for  felony  during  the 
same  year  were  5,678.  During  the  preceding  year 
there  were  24,192  arrests  for  felony,  with  but  5,321 
convictions,  and  during  the  year  1908  there  were 
25,209  arrests,  with  6,"099  convictions. 

On  the  strength  of  this  showing  only  one  out  of 
every  four  persons  arrested  for  felony  in  the  greater 
city  is  convicted,  which  does  not  necessarily  mean 
punished,  since  10  per  cent  of  those  convicted  es- 
cape punishment  by  appeal. 


104  Prison   Problems 


A  PRISON  LYCEUM. 

Some  Attractions  That  Have  Appeared  on  the  Fort  Madison  Course  Up 
to   June    15,    1912. 

Mrs.  Florence  Maybrick,  Lecturer;  Dr.  Henry 
Clark,  two  lectures;  Ned  Woodman,  Cartoonist; 
Rogers  &  Grilley,  Humorist  and  Harpist;  Schild- 
kret's  Royal  Hungarian  Orchestra;  Chas.  H.  Plat- 
tenburg,  Lecturer;  Robert  Parker  Miles,  Lecturer; 
Dunbar  Quartet  and  Bell  Ringers;  Enderle- Wilson 
Concert  Company;  Sylvester  A.  Long,  Lecturer; 
Keokuk  Concert  Company,  two  engagements ;  Skov- 
gaard  Concert  Company;  Ellsworth  Plumstead, 
Characterist ;  Maud  Ballington  Booth,  Lecturer; 
Fred  High,  Entertainer ;  Caveny  Concert  Company ; 
Edmund  Vance  Cook,  Recital ;  Strickland  W.  Gil- 
lilan,  Humorist;  Thomas  McClary,  two  lectures; 
Dr.  H.  W.  Sears,  The  "Taffy"  Lecturer;  McCor- 
mick  &  Bronte;  William  Sterling  Battis,  Life  Por- 
trayals; John  B.  Ratto,  Impersonator;  Joseffy, 
Necromancer;  Slayton  Jubilee  Singers;  Mauer  Sis- 
ters' Concert  Company;  Edwin  Weeks  Concert 
Company,  two  engagements;  Prof.  E.  Green,  Lec- 
ture-Recital ;  Prof.  Alonzo  Zwickey,  Cartoonist ;  The 
Spaffords,  Cartoonists;  Capt.  Jack  Crawford,  The 
Poet-Scout ;  Germain,  Magician ;  Roney  Boys  Con- 
cert Company;  Burlington  Ladies  Concert  Com- 
pany. 


Prison    Problems  105 

THE  HONOR  SYSTEM. 

By  Oswald  West,  Governor  of  Oregon. 

Oregon  had  all  the  vices  in  its  prison  system 
that  any  other  prison  boasted.  It  had  the  "water- 
cure"  with  its  ingeniously  horrible  contrivance  for 
torturing  a  recalcitrant  convict  into  submission.  In 
the  bath-room  of  the  same  prison  one  may  still  see 
the  iron  rings  for  tricing  up  men  to  be  flogged  or 
tortured  (to  death  in  some  cases)  by  the  hose — 
grim  reminders  that  ten  years  ago  was  as  200  years 
ago  in  man's  treatment  of  his  wards. 

Oregon  had,  up  within  the  past  few  years,  con- 
sidered its  convicts  in  the  same  light  as  had  most  of 
the  rest  of  the  world — as  dangerous  individuals,  to 
be  punished,  not  reformed,  and  from  whom  the  State 
was  to  be  protected  at  all  odds.  To  regard  them 
as  men  was  as  foreign  to  the  keepers  of  Oregon's 
prisoners  as  to  those  of  Old  Ludlow. 

Today  you  can  take  a  trip  over  almost  any  road 
out  of  Salem  and  pass  convicts  at  work  without 
being  able  to  tell  them  from  the  ordinary  industrious 
farm-hand  to  be  met  with  in  any  country-side. 

There  is  no  "prison  look"  about  them.  The  hang- 
dog shift  is  lacking  from  their  eyes.  There  is  a 
healthy  tan  on  their  faces.  The  feeling  of  satisfac- 
tion that  comes  from  a  hard  day's  work  out-of-doors 
is  noticeable.  The  cleverest  forger,  the  most  ac- 
complished safe-cracker,  the  most  daring  of  porch 
climbers  seem  to  have  the  unhealthy  lure  of  their 
crafts  driven  out  of  them.  There  is  no  room  for 


106  Prison   Problems 

crime  thoughts  when  there's  a  day's  work  to  be 
done  in  the  country  sunlight,  with  the  knowledge 
that  they  are  as  free  from  suspicion  and  surveillance 
as  the  rich  farmer,  who  is  working  his  own  fields 
across  the  road. 

They  may  be  road  building — the  roads  of  Marion 
County  are  a  grateful  evidence  of  their  employment 
in  that  capacity — they  may  be  plowing,  milking, 
doing  any  of  the  jobs  that  a  farm  has  to  offer,  per- 
haps they  drive  back  to  the  penitentiary  at  night 
with  their  own  team  or  perhaps,  as  is  the  case  with 
many,  who  are  working  some  distance  from  the  pris- 
on, they  camp  out  or  are  given  quarters  in  a  house 
or  a  barn.  No  one  has  been  found  who  has  com- 
plained of  the  quality  of  their  work.  For  it  seems 
that  the  energy  it  takes  to  make  a  truly  "successful" 
criminal,  if  turned  into  other  channels,  is  pretty  apt 
to  make  a  most  excellent  workman. 

There's  little,  if  any,  inclination  on  the  part  of 
the  people  living  in  and  about  Salem  to  resent  the 
liberty  given  the  convicts.  One  man  complained  that 
he  thought  a  road  gang  at  work  near  his  home 
formed  an  unwarranted  menace  to  his  property  and 
safety.  The  gang  was  withdrawn,  but  all  of  that 
man's  neighbors  and  their  wives  got  together  and 
gave  the  convicts  a  dinner. 

It  was  held  in  a  grove  near  Sublimity,  where  the 
men  had  been  working.  The  Governor  and  other 
State  officials  were  invited.  The  farmers  sat  at  the 
big  table  under  the  trees  with  the  convicts.  The 
women  of  the  neighborhood  club  waited  on  the 
table  and  saw  that  everybody  had  enough  to  eat. 
And  when  the  tables  had  been  cleared  away  there 
were  speeches  in  which  the  hosts  thanked  their 


Prison    Problems  107 

guests  for  the  work  they  had  done  in  behalf  of 
good  roads,  and  the  guests  thanked  their  hosts  for 
an  entertainment  that  demonstrated  the  days  of 
treating  convicts  as  dangerous  beasts  had  passed 
away.  It  was  probably  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
dinner  parties  Oregon  ever  saw.  One  of  the  two 
convicts  who  spoke  at  this  dinner  said:  "Under  a 
system  like  this,  where  we  are  treated  as  men,  the 
best  we  can  do  is  scarcely  sufficient.  Under  com- 
pulsion, and  guarded  by  cold  steel  and  heartless 
men,  the  least  we  can  do  is  good  enough.  We  ap- 
preciate this  dinner  which  the  ladies  have  given  us. 
We  feel  that  under  such  a  system  as  the  present 
one  that  incarceration  is  a  help  and  not  a  hindrance 
in  getting  us  re-established  as  beneficial  members 
of  society." 

It  is  this  idea  of  treating  the  convicts  as  men  who 
have  made  a  mistake  and  who  are  to  be  taught 
better,  that  seems  to  be  the  keynote  of  the  unusual 
success  the  "Honor  System"  has  attained  thus  far. 
The  men  are  watched  as  they  enter  the  penitentiary, 
their  conduct,  anxiety  to  work,  willingness  to  obey 
rules,  are  all  taken  into  consideration.  The  bank 
wrecker  and  the  footpad  enter  on  exactly  the  same 
ground.  But  once  a  regular  inmate  of  the  institu- 
tion, the  convict  naturally  drifts  into  his  own  class. 
The  really  vicious,  so  far  as  close  scrutiny  on  the 
part  of  the  prison  officials  reveals,  are  a  small  minor- 
ity. Many  of  the  new  men  are  indifferent.  Most 
of  the  so-called  "repeaters" — convicts  who  are  serv- 
ing their  second  or  third  term  in  a  state's  prison — 
are  regarded  with  suspicion,  and  yet  some  of  the 
best  men  that  are  now  out  on  the  "honor  gangs," 
trusted  absolutely  with  their  own  liberty  and  in 


108  Prison    Problems 

some  instances,  with  the  property  and  lives  of  oth- 
ers, are  "repeaters." 

The  penitentiary  boasts  a  baseball  team  that,  if 
it  were  out  in  the  world,  would  make  many  pro- 
fessionals seek  the  seclusion  of  the  "brush  leagues." 
On  it  are  men  who  have  played  the  game  to  the  re- 
sultant glory  of  their  colleges,  as  well  as  others  who 
never  threw  a  baseball  outside  an  alley  but  who  have 
developed  into  players  of  unusual  skill.  The  con- 
tests of  a  Saturday  afternoon,  on  the  brick-enclosed, 
Winchester-guarded  diamond,  with  400  or  more 
wildly  enthusiastic  fans  recently  divorced  from 
striped  suits,  to  cheer  them  on,  are  curious  but 
inspiring.  Love  of  sport,  love  of  work,  belief  in  one 
another — unlocked  for  flowers  in  a  grim  prison  gar- 
den. 

There  are  other  ways  of  occupying  the  convict's 
mind.  There  is  the  library  common  to  many  prisons. 
The  readers  are  mostly  men  who  are  mentally  or 
physically  unfitted  for  work.  The  proportion  of 
those  who,  of  their  own  accord,  would  sit  in  the 
library  reading  in  preference  to  performing  the  hard- 
est kind  of  manual  labor  out-of-doors  is  extremely 
small.  The  recently-completed  chapel  serves  as  a 
theatre  several  times  a  month — in  it  are  held  con- 
certs, lectures,  and — most  modern  of  the  outside 
world's  attractions — moving  pictures. 

And  so  in  work,  sport  and  play,  the  boys  and  men 
of  the  Oregon  penitentiary  are  forgetting  earlier  les- 
sons in  law-breaking  and  learning  fresh  ones  in 
citizenship.  No  man  is  turned  out  with  the  feeling 
that  he  is  to  become  the  prey  of  the  first  detective 
or  deputy  sheriff  who  hears  of  his  release,  a  con- 
venient scape-goat  upon  whom  to  fasten  a  fresh 


Prison    Problems  109 

offense.  He  is  made  to  feel  that  the  friends  he  made 
while  at  Salem  are  to  be  relied  upon  from  first  to 
last.  He  has  acquired  a  trade,  or  at  least  he  has 
"got  his  hand  in"  at  working  again,  so  that  he  need 
not  fear  the  necessity  of  going  back  to  law-breaking 
to  gain  a  living  that  the  world  owes  him. 

The  old  system  of  turning  away  a  convict  upon 
the  expiration  of  his  term  with  five  dollars  and  a 
suit  of  prison  clothes  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  too,  and 
for  this  "Honor  System"  can  also  claim  the  largest 
share  of  the  responsibility.  The  State  does  not  con- 
sider that  the  proceeds  of  a  convict's  labor  belong  to 
it  entirely — it  shares  them  with  him.  For  the  work 
that  is  done  about  the  State  institutions  he  is  paid 
twenty-five  cents  a  day.  This  money  is  saved  and 
he  is  given  the  cash  upon  his  release  from  the  peni- 
tentiary. Those  working  in  the  stove  factory  are 
allowed  a  percentage  of  their  earnings,  while  the 
men  in  the  brick  yards,  through  their  willingness  to 
work  longer  hours,  are  each  earning  about  forty 
cents  a  day  and  have  greatly  increased  the  revenue 
of  the  State. 

Those  brick-yards  have  been  a  part  of  the  prison 
for  some  time.  The  convicts  employed  there  had 
been  turning  out  about  16,000  bricks  a  day.  The 
prisoners  were  told  that  the  State  was  willing  to 
divide  the  profits  of  any  brick  in  excess  of  that 
number  with  the  men  in  the  yards. 

They  accepted  this  proposition  and  the  next  week 
the  number  of  bricks  turned  out  averaged  over  20,000. 
From  then  on  it  has  been  between  20,000  and  23,000 
daily.  It  meant  money  for  the  convicts  and  it  meant 
money  for  the  State.  It  was  a  simple  and  effective 
method  of  increasing  efficiency  in  the  brickyards. 


110  Prison    Problems 

The  results  would  seem  to  justify  my  belief  that 
three-fourths  of  the  men  who  are  sent  to  the  peni- 
tentiary are  not  criminals  at  heart,  are  really  not 
any  worse  offenders  than  thousands  who  through 
some  turn  of  fortune's  wheel,  escape  the  stigma  of 
a  penitentiary  term. 

People  say  that  I  am  sensational  in  my  dealings. 
That  may  be  true — but  I  find  their  cases  are  sensa- 
tional. To  me  it  is  sensational  to  know  that  there 
are  men  in  the  penitentiary  who  do  not  belong  there, 
whose  presence  there  may  mean  either  that  they  are 
shown  the  right  road  or  the  wrong — largely  as  we 
deal  with  them.  Here's  a  young  fellow  who  has 
perhaps  got  in  a  little  trouble  through  drink.  I 
find  most  of  these  cases  result  from  whiskey.  He's 
been  railroaded  to  the  penitentiary.  It  is  at  this 
point  that  he  needs  a  helping  hand.  He  is  ashamed 
to  write  to  his  family  to  let  them  know  his  plight. 
He  is  in  constant  association  with  hardened  char- 
acters— there  are  always  a  certain  number  of  them 
in  a  large  prison.  I'  have  been,  and  I  propose  to 
continue,  letting  such  a  boy  out  to  work  on  parole. 
I  don't  believe  that  is  sentimentalism.  I  think  it 
is  good  sense. 

The  practical  proof  of  the  "Honor  System"  at  the 
Oregon  penitentiary,  of  course,  lies  in  whether  it 
works  or  not.  If  it  did  not  work  it  might  be  inter- 
esting sentimentally,  but  scarcely  desirable  from  a 
practicable  point  of  view.  But  it  does  work.  In  the 
two  years  just  preceding  the  adoption  of  the  system 
— in  the  years  1909-1910 — about  thirty  men  escaped 
from  the  prison.  Some  were  killed,  some  captured, 
some  are  still  at  large.  Since  the  "Honor  System" 
went  into  effect  three  men  have  broken  their  pledges 


Prison   Problems  111 

and,  taking  advantage  of  the  lack  of  guards,  escaped. 
One  has  since  been  recaptured.  This,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  system  was  tried  out  through  the 
long  summer  months,  when  the  wanderlust,  if  ever, 
is  at  its  strongest,  when  the  temptation  to  break  that 
imaginary  shackle  called  Honor  is  greatest,  when 
it  is  easiest  to  follow  the  trail  through  the  woods 
and  over  the  hills,  to  sleep  out-of-doors  under  the 
firs,  and  to  gather  what  food  one  needs  to  sustain 
life  until  he  is  out  of  the  danger  zone. 

In  conclusion  let  me  say  that  I  believe  in  the 
prisoners.  They  are  savable.  I  believe  in  plenty  of 
wholesome,  cheerful  and  useful  labor.  I  believe  that 
Jesus  Christ  and  John  Howard  and  Abraham  Lin- 
coln were  full  of  gentle  sympathy  and  stern  justice, 
and  did  all  they  could  to  help  the  unfortunate.  I 
want  to  emulate  them. 


A  PLEA. 

Dr.  Emil  G.  Hirsch,  the  eminent  Jewish  Rabbi, 
in  pleading  for  the  victims  of  the  white  slave  traffic 
said:  "I  plead  with  the  city  not  to  lend  official 
connivance  but  to  break  up  this  form  of  vice  slavery 
which  is  not  reproduced  in  the  mines  of  Siberia. 
Away  with  the  segregated  district  and  then  we  may 
be  able  to  help  some  of  these  victims  of  this  ter- 
rible vice. 

"A  segregated  vice  district  is  a  constant  tempta- 
tion for  the  police  to  corrupt  themselves  and  to  be 
corrupted.  For  the  sake  of  the  police,  if  for  no 
other  reason,  I  say  away  with  the  segregated  dis- 
trict." 


112  Prison    Problems 

A  PRISON  LYCEUM. 

By  James  Gordon  Stell. 

Iowa  has  attained  a  new  distinction.  In  a  field 
heretofore  deemed  unworthy  of  development,  Iowa 
has  worked  out  results  that  have  placed  its  name  far 
in  the  van  of  states  which  in  the  past  were  acknowl- 
edged leaders  in  penal  matters.  This  new  honor  has 
come  through  the  intelligent,  practical  reforms  intro- 
duced into  the  Iowa  penitentiary  by  Warden  J.  C. 
Sanders. 

Without  question  the  greatest  good,  accomplished 
by  any  one  change  made  for  the  betterment  of  state 
wards  confined  in  the  Fort  Madison  institution,  has 
come  from  the  introduction  of  an  entirely  new  form 
of  educational  entertainment.  Formerly  it  was  the 
custom  to  secure  the  low  priced  vaudeville  troupe, 
and  thus  keep  the  amusement  expense  within  the 
stipulated  amount  set  aside  for  that  purpose.  This 
appropriation,  however,  being  but  $25  for  each  holi- 
day, could  not  command  even  the  best  of  the  poor- 
est, and  consequently  the  "comedy  team"  was  doom- 
ed to  grace  the  penitentiary's  stage  no  more  by 
the  news  of  a  reform  order  which  spread  among 
the  state  wards  with  unbelievable  rapidity.  This 
order  was  to  the  effect  that,  if  sufficient  funds  could 
be  raised,  a  lyecum  course  of  high  class,  refined 
entertainments  would  be  arranged  and  given.  The 
announcement  made  an  instantaneous  hit,  its  popu- 
larity being  manifested  by  numerous  offers  of  state 
wards  to  subscribe  to  the  fund.  This  was  encour- 


Prison    Problems  113 

agement  of  the  right  kind  and  when  one  of  the  wards 
passed  along  the  flag  and  gallery  cells  with  a  sub- 
scription blank,  the  men  in  cells  displayed  an  in- 
dividual pride  and  anxious  eagerness  to  sign  their 
names  and  set  down  opposite,  the  amount  each  wish- 
ed to  donate.  When  the  list  was  finally  computed 
it  was  learned  that  the  sum  was  more  than  enough 
to  pay  for  a  full  lyceum  course  of  the  first  class. 
And  this  desire  to  give  toward  the  fund  was  evident 
among  the  guards  and  friends  who  placed  their 
gifts  without  being  requested  to  do  so. 

As  all  important  events,  which  occur  behind  iron 
bars  and  stone  walls,  leak  out  and  become  public 
property  through  different  channels,  so  did  the  news 
of  a  "Lyceum  course  in  prison"  reach  the  alert  news 
writers  of  the  state,  who  gave  the  fact  much  pub- 
licity. Able  journalists  took  up  the  subject  with 
much  vigor.  It  was  something  new  and  catchy. 
Pro  and  con  it  was  debated  and  both  sides  indulged 
in  a  slugfest  of  words  without  awaiting  details  or 
results.  Warden  Sanders  heeded  not  the  anti  or 
enthusiast.  After  an  extended  correspondence  and 
carefully  weighing,  measuring  and  balancing  the 
merit  of  several  organizations,  contracts  were  signed 
and  the  first  number  announced  to  a  chorus  of  ap- 
plause that  must  have  echoed  its  gratitude  to  hea- 
ven. It  was  a  new  "door  of  light"  opened  to  the  sin- 
blinded,  and  even  the  "long-timers"  and  gray  haired 
life  men  voiced  their  appreciation  by  smiles  and 
nodding  heads.  Mrs.  Florence  Maybrick,  whose 
voice  has  touched  the  responsive  sympathetic  note 
in  countless  American  audiences,  was  the  first  num- 
ber and  it  was  a  huge  success  in  every  way.  Her 
lecture,  "The  Story  of  My  Life,"  unfolded  her  ex- 
periences of  twelve  years'  imprisonment  in  an  Eng- 


114  Prison    Problems 

lish  penal  institution  and  her  recital  elicited  the 
closest  attention.  During  this  number  which  was 
given  in  the  penitentiary's  chapel,  the  state  wards 
exhibited  no  sign  of  misbehavior  or  ungentlemanly 
conduct.  As  was  expected  the  conduct  of  the  in- 
mates was  scanned  closely  at  this  first  entertain- 
ment, but  no  breach  of  discipline  occurred  and  their 
faultless  conduct  was  commented  upon  freely  and 
approved  even  by  those  who  had  doubted  the  wis- 
dom of  the  plan. 

There  are  three  remarkable  facts  revealed  in 
this  new  field  of  uplift ;  first,  the  initiative,  foresight 
and  business  ability  necessary  to  build,  with  no 
precedent,  a  new  institution  of  human  endeavor  to 
"make  a  man  understand  himself"  by  examples 
placed  within  his  sight;  second,  the  spirit  of  the 
state  wards  to  give  financial  assistance  to  help  them- 
selves out  of  the  rut  of  mental  darkness ;  and,  third, 
the  result.  It  can  be  stated  with  no  fear  for  ques- 
tioning that  this  entertainment  feature  is  by  far  the 
greatest  educational  and  uplifting  reform  that  has 
as  yet  been  tried.  Every  number  has,  for  a  funda- 
mental keynote,  an  appeal  which  thrills  the  hearer 
and  leaves  some  principle  of  Christ's  teachings  in- 
delibly impressed  on  the  hearer. 

One  prisoner  said:  "I  had  to  come  to  the  peni- 
tentiary to  know  the  value  of  the  lyceum  course." 
And  many  of  the  state  wards  confess  they  had  never 
viewed  a  lyceum  number  before  entering  this  insti- 
tution. Since  the  beginning  of  these  entertainments 
there  has  been  a  marked  improvement  in  the  mental 
and  moral  tone  of  the  wards — evidence  undisputable 
that  the  future  of  these  now  wall  bound  men  shall 
be  better  and  truer  in  the  full  sense  of  honest  en- 
deavor to  "live  within  the  law."  Iowa  may  well  be 


Prison    Problems  115 

proud  of  the  new  distinction.  The  first  lyceum 
course  is  a  wonderful  step  forward  in  penal  prog- 
ress and  toward  the  prevention  and  cure  for  crime. 

"From  the  opening  number,  the  Iowa  Penitentiary 
has  slowly  yet  surely,  changed,  transformed.  The 
gloomy,  sullen  face  is  seen  no  more.  Cheerful,  con- 
tented smiles  are  now  evident  on  every  face;  the 
short,  jerked-out  growls  are  gone — pleasant,  courte- 
ous replies  are  given  to  every  order,  slouchy,  unkept 
appearances  have  passed  away,  and  clean  gentleman- 
ly manners  are  the  present  mode;  the  men  march 
erect  and  soldierly  instead  of  shuffling  along  with 
averted,  downcast  eyes;  the  general  conduct  as 
shown  by  the  monthly  reports,  has  improved  until 
there  is  a  minimum  of  infractions ;  the  discipline  was 
never  administered  as  fairly,  as  humanely  as  at 
present;  and  it  is  through  the  messages  taught  by 
the  entertainments  embraced  in  the  lyceum  courses 
that  these  changes  have  been  brought  about.  Every 
number  has  opened  some  new  door  of  hope,  some 
new  window  to  light,  and  the  lessons  learned  have 
changed  the  life  courses  of  many  of  the  men.  New 
ideals  have  been  presented  to  eager  seekers ;  new 
thoughts,  and  new  truths  and  the  influence  has 
always  been  for  the  betterment  of  the  hearers,  and 
must  effect  a  like  result  on  the  little  folks  who  shall 
come  to  the  homes  of  these  now  wall-bound  men  in 
after  years. 

"As  every  good  seed  must  in  time,  if  sown  in 
fertile  soil,  make  fruitful  return,  so  should  every  in- 
telligent person  recognize  the  potency  of  the  inspir- 
ing, uplifting  mental  and  moral  tone  of  clean,  intel- 
lectual entertainments  such  as  have  been  served 
by  the  lyceum  entertainers  who  have  appeared  in 
the.  Iowa  Penitentiary." 


116  Prison    Problems 


THE  DEATH  OF  THE  PRISON-POET. 

The  greatest  responsibility  that  ever  came  into 
my  hands  was  placed  there  on  August  20th,  when  I 
received  a  letter  from  James  Gorden  Stell,  the  Prison 
Poet  of  Fort  Madison,  Iowa,  who  a  few  days  after 
he  had  penned  this  letter  was  a  corpse  in  that  same 
prison  where  he  had  served  the  State  for  four  long 
years,  and  let  us  hope  that  he  served  humanity 
while  he  served  the  state,  for  his  insight  into  those 
forms  of  grief,  remorse,  suspicion,  fears,  hopes,  joys, 
dreams  and  despairs  that  are  known  only  to  the 
man  behind  the  bars  will  serve  to  awaken  a  new 
interest  in  those  Prison  Problems  that  are  every- 
where calling  for  a  new  solution. 

Here  is  the  letter  that  made  me  sit  up  nights : 
Read  it. 
"Dear  Mr.  High : 

"Don't  write  'finis'  to  your  'editorial  introductory' 
to  'Prison  Problems'  until  after  coming  here  and 
seeing  me.  If  I  am  sunk  in  here  for  good,  as  indi- 
cations and  observations  appear,  I  want  to  make 
this  book  do  a  lasting  good.  Evidence  tends  to 
show  it  is  the  real  cause  of  my  being  detained  and 
I  am  willing  now  to  pay  a  price  of  years  that  I 
can  look  back  and  say,  with  satisfactory  solace  in 
elder  times :  'It  is  well.' 

"  'Prison  Problems'  is  too  good  to  be  wasted. 
Ideas  like  it  do  not  come  to  men  every  day.  Praise 
to  men  of  now  may  prove  a  punch  to  men  of  tomor- 
row. We  are  Punch  and  Judys  after  all.  But  I 
want  my  'stunt'  to  be  worth  the  entry  fee.  Actors 


Prison    Problems  117 

only  visualize.  One  'ok'd'  today  is  condemned  to- 
morrow. Old  Omar  was  a  sensible  warbler.  But 
his  song  was  not  dictated.  He  sang  the  'faded 
flower'  uncaged.  I  am  gloriously  glad  to  lose  my 
years  of  usefulness  for  a  worthy  cause  if  that  must 
be  the  price.  My  sherbet  is  a  sunset. 

"Arrange  to  overnight  here  soon.  Deduct  ex- 
penses from  book.  Maybe  we  can  arrange  a  settle- 
ment and  I  believe  it  is  the  only  way  out.  The  game 
is  worth  the  candle.  So  come  out." 

But  where  did  the  triple  tragedy  come  in?  Well, 
the  following  is  taken  from  a  letter  from  Warden 
Sanders  and  it  speaks  for  itself:  "Replying  to  yours 
of  the  29th  will  say  that  Stell  stays  out  after  Sun- 
day school  on  Sunday  afternoons  to  clean  up  the 
chapel.  The  photograph  room  is  immediately  east 
of  the  chapel.  Stell  broke  into  this  room  and  got 
about  a  pint  of  what  he  thought  was  grain  alcohol, 
but  it  was  wood  alcohol  and  denatured  at  that.  He 
drank  some  himself  and  passed  it  around  to  several 
other  prisoners.  As  a  result  three  are  dead,  Stell, 
Dimmitt,  the  celebrated  negro  singer,  and  Louis 
Busse,  a  life  man.  Stell  had  relatives  whom  we 
advised  of  his  death  and  they  requested  us  to  bury 
the  body  here  as  they  did  not  want  to  come.  Stell 
was  born  and  raised  in  Cedar  Falls  and  his  right 

name  was .  His  father  and  mother  are 

both  living  in  Minnesota." 

That  Stell  felt  himself  slipping  away  was  evi- 
denced from  the  following  letter  which  was  received 
only  a  few  weeks  before  his  tragic  exit  from  the 
stage  of  action.  "Some  days  ago  I  forwarded  to 
you  a  few  subscribers  (to  Prison  Problems),  to  help 
the  work  along.  My  limitations  are  so  narrow  that 


118  Prison    Problems 

I  can  do  very  little.  In  regard  to  the  tenor  of 
Mr.  Russell's  and  Mr.  Leavitt's  articles,  I  would 
state  that  I  believe  anything  they  may  state  can 
do  me  no  harm  nor  good.  If  my  host  of  friends 
can  do  nothing,  I  see  no  reason  to  think  anything 
can  be  done  by  pen.  However,  though  conditions 
in  regard  to  Iowa  parole  laws  need  harsh  treatment, 
there  is  one  man  who  has  stood  by  me  and  whose 
name  can  only  be  justly  mentioned  with  praise — 
Warden  J.  C.  Sanders,  my  friend.  I  would  ask  you 
to  observe  that  fact,  because  I  would  have  nothing 
said  or  done  that  would  in  any  way  reflect  discredit- 
ably to  him  or  tend  to  injure  his  kindness  toward 
me.  Other  than  he,  you  have  my  approval  to  rip 
into  vigorously,  as  I  now  feel  I  am  doomed  to  do 
my  full  time. 

"If  there  were  any  such  thing  as  recognition  in 
Iowa  of  worthy  effort  to  'be  square'  I  should  have 
been  given  a  chance  long  ago.  As  it  is  the  records 
prove  that  a  large  majority  of  the  few  paroles  given 
are  granted  the  worst  characters  among  us.  We 
have  come  to  look  upon  the  'called  and  chosen'  with 
disgust  and  contempt. 

"I  speak  from  the  depths  of  my  heart  when  I 
say,  'I  would  that  Warden  Sanders  were  in  a  posi- 
tion to  measure  out  justice  to  me  and  all  in  my 
position  in  Iowa.'  As  you  know,  my  case  came  up 
in  April  for  action  after  several  months  of  'stalling.' 
I  haven't  a  pen-scratch  since  then.  Such  delay 
fills  the  insane  ward  and  you  need  not  be  surprised 
if  I  am  among  the  future  transferred.  It  is  inevit- 
able as  I  feel  myself  slipping  mentally  every  day. 
Of  course,  I  am  fighting  it,  but  each  day  brings 
some  new  fact  of  broken  faith  and  unfairness  that 


Prison    Problems  119 

cannot  be  forgotten.  I  have  been  here  over  four 
years — a  greater  crime  than  I  committed  to  come 
here!  One  thing  is  certain,  I  have  made  my  last 
effort  to  get  out  because  I  know  it  is  useless." 

Immediately  after  the  sad  tragedy  that  ended  the 
life  of  the  author  of  many  of  the  poems  in  this 
volume  of  Prison  Problems  there  was  a  whispered 
suggestion  to  drop  the  volume,  but  those  poor  weak- 
lings who  are  either  moral  cowards,  or  mere  oppor- 
tunists seem  unable  to  comprehend  the  fact  that 
this  volume  was  never  undertaken  to  help  an  indi- 
vidual, it  is  to  serve  a  cause.  That  cause  is  the 
lyceum,  as  a  help  in  the  moral  uplift  of  the  men 
behind  the  bars. 

It  is  only  fair  to  James  Gordon  Stell  to  relate 
that  there  are  many  who  by  letter  and  by  conversa- 
tion have  vehemently  urged  that  Stell  and  his  com- 
panions either  committed  suicide,  or  the  poison  was 
not  labeled,  in  which  case  it  was  criminal  negligence, 
and  not  a  case  of  suicide.  They  hint  that  his  death 
was  perhaps  a  greater  tragedy  than  the  world  knows 
aught  of. 

But  whether  these  are  mere  suspicions  or  are 
facts  we  have  no  way  of  knowing,  for  the  secrets 
of  all  prisons  are  locked  up  and  I  have  not  the  key 
to  more  than  the  outer  entrance. 

James  Gordon  Stell  has  finished  his  life  work. 
Peace  to  his  memory — may  he,  in  a  measure,  serve 
humanity  even  as  did  the  thief  who  gave  up  his 
life  on  the  Cross,  who  little  dreamt  that  when  he 
spoke  the  comforting  words  to  the  crucified  Christ 
that  he  had  thereby  brought  a  last  ray  of  life  and 
hope  to  millions  of  despairing  men  and  women. 


120  Prison    Problems 


FOREWORD. 

There  be  music-makers  sitting  in  the  sun, 
Writing  of  their  longings,  of  their  love  and  fun; 
But  if  night  come  on  them,  and  the  heavens  fall, 
Could  they  utter  music,  would  they  write  at  all? 

We,  the  music-makers  who  have  written  here, 
Know  of  heaven's  fallen,  and  the  hopeless  tear; 
Sit  we  in  the  darkness,  singing  of  the  light, 
Singing  as  if  sunshine  glowed  in  halls  of  night. 

JOHN  NULL.* 
JAMES  GORDON  STELL.f 
Fort  Madison,  Iowa. 


•Colored. 
tDeceased. 


Prison    Problems  121 


DIVOECED— BY  BAES. 

The  peopled  din  of  Toyland  thrilled 

With  shoutings  of  a  fight 
Between  a  host  forever  killed, 

And  baby's  marshalled  might. 
Small  crooner,  he,  of  griefs  and  joys, 

When  visioned  Toyland  warred; 
Commander  of  the  clashing  toys, 

Their  Spirit  and  their  Lord. 

A  man  of  tin  fought  in  the  van, 

To  many  battles  shoved, 
And  sheltered,  like  a  dauntless  man, 

A  doll  that  baby  loved; 
Till  on  his  mystic  world  of  things 

Where  life  and  death  were  one. 
Where  spools  were  either  queens  or  kings, 

There  beamed  the  setting  sun. 

Its  rays  slid  through  the  open  door, 

And,  with  a  noiseless  tread, 
They  stole  across  the  littered  floor, 

To  touch  the  baby's  head ; 
They  kissed  his  chin,  his  lips,  his  face — 

Then  baby  ceased  his  play 
And  gazed  toward  that  soundless  space 

Where  slips  the  end  of  day. 

And  while  he  gazed,  shop-whistles  blew, 

Then  all  the  world  was  still, 
And  what  did  little  baby  do 

But  babble  with  a  will; 


*  22  Prison    Problems 

"Daa-da  turn!    Daa-da  turn!" 

The  little  one  had  learned 
That  stilling  of  the  "shops  'at  hum" 

Meant  that  his  "dad"  returned. 

Then  there  were  sounds  of  passing  feet 

While  workmen  clattered  by; 
And  baby's  face  was  wistful  sweet, 

And  wide  each  watching  eye, 
He  looked  beyond  the  open  door, 

His  flower-face  upturned, 
His  toys  unnoticed  on  the  floor, 

The  pet  tin  soldier  spurned. 

While  baby  watched,  the  world  went  still ; 

And  baby's  watch  was  vain, 
His  outward  eager  stare  was  crushed 

By  inward  baby  pain ; 
And  baby,  with  a  trembling  lip, 

Eyes  wondering  and  wide, 
Eyes  with  great  baby  tears  adrip, 

Ran  to  his  mother's  side. 

"Oh,  mamma,  where  is  dada  dear? 

He  used  to  turn  you  know, 
An'  now  he  never  does  turn  here, 

An'  oh,  I  want  him  so!" 
Then  baby's  eyes  grew  wider  yet — 

Those  eyes  of  mist  and  blue — 
He  saw  his  mother's  face  tear-wet, 

And  whispered,  "So  does  oo!" 

The  selfsame  tender  rays  that  beamed 
Upon  the  babe  at  play 


Prison    Problems  123 

Shone  in  the  place  where  men  blasphemed 

The  spirit  and  the  clay; 
They  called  this  place  a  prison — men 

Who  knew  it  none  too  well ; 
But  they  who  knew  it  said,  "the  pen" ; 

And  they  with  feelings,  "hell." 

And  there  was  one  left  well  alone 

By  every  man  within 
This  place  defined  by  walls  of  stone, 

This  bounded  place  of  sin; 
He  lived  as  one  who  has  no  plan, 

No  dream  of  manhood's  worth — 
They  said  he  hated  God,  and  man, 

Himself,  and  day,  and  earth. 

They  said  (the  wise  ones  in  this  place) 

That  he  was  dull  and  blind ; 
That  his  line-marked  and  scowling  face 

Betrayed  a  brutal  mind; 
Yet,  in  the  sun's  departing  flame, 

I  saw  his  face  aglow, 
I  heard  his  strangled  voice  exclaim : 

"I  want  my  baby  so!" 


124  Prison    Problems 


BACKWARD  TO  PULSELESS  CLAY. 

Four  times  upon  an  iron  gong 

The  keeper  swings  with  might; 
Four  times  it  cast  a  clanging  song 

Of  farewell  to  the  night; 
The  echoes  lingered,  loud  and  long, 

Then  came  a  flood  of  light; 
And  all  the  sleep-drowsed  prison  throng 

Saw  rest  and  dreams  take  flight. 

Then  came  the  tread  of  heavy  men 

And  clang  of  bolt  and  key, 
And  bars  crashed  back,  till  each  small  pen 

On  flag  and  gallery 
Belched  forth  its  thing  and  closed  again — 

To  hide  what  men  might  see — 
The  shameful  hole  for  sleep — (and  then, 

On  to  work's  misery). 

He  heard  the  clanging  morning  call 

And  watched,  with  wistful  eye, 
To  see  the  men  far  down  the  hall, 

In  grim  files  marching  by. 
He  counted  shadows  on  the  wall, 

And  dumbly  wondered  why 
He  was  alone  and  had  lost  all — 

That  he  must  die — must  die. 

His  hours  were  haunted  with  weak  fears, 

And  when  he  tried  to  sleep 
His  dreams  were  nightmared  by  past  years, 

And  tortured  shapes  would  creep 


Prison    Problems  125 

About  his  bed  and  taunt  with  sneers, 
The  thoughts  that  he  would  keep 

Unread  by  men — his  doubts,  his  tears, 
His  horror,  hidden  deep. 

Always  he  looked  toward  the  west, 

Beyond  the  fast-barred  door, 
As  if  his  soul  was  on  some  quest 

Not  found  in  crime's  red  lore; 
Or  yet,  as  if  the  dark  cowled  Guest 

Were  due  to  tread  the  floor 
And  lure  his  soul  unto  that  rest 

Where  sin  comes  nevermore. 

A  noon-high  sun;  a  curious  throng; 

A  breathless,  guarded,  way; 
And  shuffling  steps  that  pass  along 

To  where  the  gallows  sway; 
And  he  who  was  condemned  for  wrong, 

Whose  life  the  debt  must  pay, 
Went  bravely,  in  his  heart  a  song, 

Backward  to  pulseless  clay. 


WEAKNESS. 

How  old  one  is,  how  great  or  wise, 
Count  not  a  whit  if  he  have  fears; 

And   still   he   sees   from   childish   eyes 
If  they  be  blurred  by  passioned  tears. 


126  Prison    Problems 

FRUSTRATION. 

I  am  about 

To  turn  a  page ;  perhaps,  or  linger  on  a  line 
Of  artful  wit  or  jeweled  thought  that  seems  divine 
When,  by  the  Rule,  but  of  no  will  or  wish  of 
mine — 

"The  Light  goes  out." 

When  man's  about 

To  turn  the  page;  when  eager,   straining  eyes, 

would  scan 

The  mystery  of  Life  or  Death,  of  God  and  Man, 
I  wonder  if — according  to  a  Power's  plan — 

"The  Light  goes  out?" 


ABOVE,  BEYOND. 

The  sun-kissed  walls  reflect  their  borrowed  light; 

Beyond  them  is  the  world ;  above,  the  skies. 
The  sun-kissed  walls  are  things  of  awful  might — 

I  may  but  look  Beyond,  Above,  with  eyes 

That  fill  with  tears. 

I  know  that  the  Beyond  with  sweet  perfume 

Is  bathed;  there  man  and  nature,  hand  in  hand 

As  comrades,  work  to  bring  forth  bud  and  bloom, 
And  multiply  the  life  of  sea  and  land 

Through  countless  years. 

What  once  were  wounds  in  Nature's  troubled  breast 
Now  fruitful  are  with  fields  of  ripened  grain 


Prison   Problems  127 

That  seem  to  s^ek,  in  sleep,  a  noonday  rest 

Or  wait  for  death — the  reaper's  might  and  main ; 

The  doom  that  nears. 

Above  is  that  great  deep  of  blue,  cloud-draped 
And  filled  with  more  to  marvel  at  than  man 

Has  builded  with  his  bungling  hands  or  shaped 
In  greatest  dreams :    There  is  God's  mighty  plan 

Of  suns  and  spheres. 

Above,  Beyond — all  mine !  Yet,  I  must  linger  where 

The  walls  forbid  the  pathways  that  my  feet 
Would  tread  or  my  soul,  in  pathless  air, 

Would  find  and  go  to  speak,  glad,  strong,  com- 
plete, 

To  God's  wise  ears. 

Debarred  from  what  is  mine — Beyond,  Above! 

God  will  that  I  may  claim  my  own,  may  roam 
On,  on,  away  from  walls  and  bars,  till  love 

Has  whispered  to  my  soul:    This  is  your  home; 

Have  done  with  tears. 


BRAVELY  AND  WELL. 

Bring  out  your  trophies  from  closet  and  chest 
A  sword,  a  gun,  or  a  faded  blue  vest, 

A  moth-eaten  blanket,  a  bullet-torn  flag, 
An  old  rusty  buckle  hid  in  a  bag. 

Then  stand  (if  you  can)  and  tell  (as  you  may) 
Of  why  tomorrow  is  Memorial  Day. 


128  Prison    Problems 

Rebs  to  the  left  of  us,  Rebs  to  the  right  of  us, 
Rebs  to  the  front  of  us,  shooting  like  hell ! 

None  to  the  rear  of  us,  God  saw  the  fight  of  us, 
Helped  us  to  battle  them  bravely  and  well. 

Soldier,  Gray  soldier,  you  fought  with  despair; 

Where  are  the  honors  and  glories  you  share? 
What  of  the  house  that,  divided,  must  fall? 

What  of  the  Watcher  that  guarded  you  all? 
What  of  the  words  and  what  can  you  say 

Of  why  tomorrow  is  Memorial  Day? 

Yanks  to  the  left  of  us,  Yanks  to  the  right  of  us, 
Yanks  to  the  front  of  us,  shooting  like  hell! 

Yanks  to  the  rear  of  us,  crushing  the  might  of  us, 
God  helped  us  battle  them  bravely  and  well. 

Soldiers,  my  soldiers,  your  battles  are  done ! 

What,  when  the  vanquished  and  victor  are  one? 
What  when  the  fields,  once  spattered  with  red, 

Now  peaceful  are  with  green  o'er  the  dead  ? 
To  Man  of  the  Gray,  and  Man  of  the  Blue, 

This  is  your  comfort — that  you  were  true, 
This  be  your  glory — the  Master  will  say — 

"Bravely  and  Well"  on  Memorial  Day. 

Peace  to  the  left  of  you,  peace  to  the  right  of  you, 
Peace  all  around  you  has  woven  her  spell, 

God  over  all  of  you,  He  saw  the  fight  of  you, 
Helped  you  to  battle,  men,  bravely  and  well. 


Prison    Problems  129 


RESIGNATION. 

The  twilight's  gray  enshrouds  me, 

A  prison  cell  entombs, 
The  hate  of  life  beclouds  me, 

Mine  is  the  gloom  of  glooms; 
Yet,  by  some  necromancy 

My  thoughts  are  led  astray 
Down  paths  of  flowered  fancy 

To  You — and  Yesterday. 

Why  do  you  come  to  haunt  me 

With  dream-born  face  aglow, 
With  eyes  that  ever  taunt  me 

With  joys  I  used  to  know? 
Past  pleasures  waken  sorrow, 

My  hopes  are  crumbled  clay, 
So  grief  is  all  I  borrow 

From  what  is  Yesterday. 

Fade  back  into  the  essence 

Wherefrom  your  glory  came! 
Back  with  your  taunting  presence 

And  leave  me  to  my  shame! 
My  longing,  dear,  I  banish, 

I  dare  not  bid  you  stay! 
With  dawn  my  dreams  must  vanish, 

And  You — and  Yesterday. 


130  Prison    Problems 


A  QUESTION— BROTHER! 

How  would  you  like  to  wear  such  clothes 

Where  such  clothes  are  the  style, 
With  stripes  like  these  and  stripes  like  those 

That  run  'round  all  the  while, 
That  circle  'round  and  'round  one's  frame, 

Until  the  ugly  rings 
Wind  one  so  close  to  one's  own  shame 

That  to  the  shame  he  clings? 

Oh,  yes,  I  know  that  ancient  saw, 

"Clothes  cannot  make  a  man." 
It's  not  by  words  but  common  law, 

It's  not  by  saws,  but  plan, 
That  nature  makes  or  nature  mars 

Both  soul  and  plastic  clay, 
And  ugly  stripes  make  ugly  scars 

That  mark  the  shamed  alway. 

Say,  if  you  wore  such  clothes  as  these, 

Would  you  feel  like  a  man — 
A  pulsing  life  with  one  long  lease 

On  God's  eternal  plan? 
Could  you  breathe  deep  in  noble  pride 

And  call  the  Great  One,  good, 
His  mercy  sweet,  His  power  wide, 

His  kindness  understood? 

If  you  would  pray,  how  would  your  speech 

Untangle  from  these  stripes? 
How  could  your  noblest  yearnings  reach 

Beyond  each  ring  that  gripes, 


Prison    Problems  131 

Not  flesh  alone,  but  hopes  and  dreams 

And  all  your  heart  may  feel, 
How  could  you  look  beyond  this  scheme 

Of  stripes  and  stone  and  steel? 

One  cannot  be  a  man  and  wear 

His  sorrow  on  his  breast! 
One  cannot  be  a  man  and  bear 

His  longings,  half  expressed! 
And,  can  one  be  a  man  at  all 

Held  by  these  stripes  of  shame, 
Entomed  behind  a  prison's  wall, 

A  number  for  a  name? 


SUPPLICATION. 

Tell  me  if  the  half-infernal 

Are  denied  the  heavenly  home — 

Is  the  brand  of  sin  eternal? 

Must  the  earth-marked  ever  roam? 

Do  the  angels,  ever  seeking, 
Meet  the  crimson  at  the  door — 

Welcome  blood,  and  in  their  greeting, 
Make  it  clean  forevermore? 

Read  me,  O  ye  Wise  One,  read  me! 

Pierce  me  with  all-seeing  eye — 
Rend  my  heart — and  soul,  if  need  be ! 

Answer  me — then,  let  me  die. 


132  Prison    Problems 


BEYOND  THE  BARS. 

Beyond  the  bars  my  tired,  straining  eyes 

Look  out  upon  a  garden  no  hands  shaped, 
That  seems  to  mirror  back  to  sapphire  skies 

In  various  shades  of  green  and  gold,   the   hills 

flower-draped 
With  nature's  gorgeous  splendor,  perfect  planned ; 

And  thru  its  very  heart  earth's  greatest  stream, 
Burdened  with  the  harvest  of  the  land 

Rushes,  on  and  on,  but  I  must  wait  and  dream — 
Beyond  the  Bars! 

Beyond  the  bars  the  call  of  life  I  hear, 

The  luring  voices  echo  day  and  night, 
From  that  free  world  I  ever  love  and  fear, 

Which  ever  hideous  bars  mask  from  my  sight. 
I  know  that  all  my  dearest  hopes  are  there, 

Those  child-pure  dreams  in  which  sin  has  no  part; 
Of  men  that  win  the  love  of  women  fair 

And  Truth  and  Justice  are — I  nurse  my  bruised 

Heart 
Beyond  the  Bars. 

Beyond  the  bars  I  feel  that  I  may  go 

Some  future  day  and  claim  my  native  right 
To  toil  and  earn  a  Free-man's  wage,  and  know 

The  thrill  that  comes  with  free,  unfettered  sight 
Of  earth  and  sky.    And,  oh,  the  greatest  hope  to  me 

Is  to  forget  forever  that  this  plan 
Of  walls  and  bars  and  all  its  misery 

Is  but  the  scheme  of  heartless,  greedy  man 
Beyond  the  Bars. 


Prison    Problems  133 

Beyond  the  bars  I  count  each  passing  day 

And  sadly  watch  the  fairest  flowers  fade ; 
The  reddest  rose  has  paled  to  a  deep  gray, 

And  green  has  taken  on  a  yellowish  shade; 
The  mighty  river  shrinks,  and  dim  the  early  stars 

Twinkle  and   disappear;  with  tired   eyes,   alone, 
I  watch  and  wait  and  know,  beyond  life's  bars 

There  is  no  thought  of  steel  or  walls  of  stone, 
Beyond  the  Bars. 


THE  CRUCIBLE. 

A  child-man  came  complaining  to 

The  stalwart  God  of  sin, 
Came  with  a  plea  unto  the  throne 

Where  none  may  mercy  win. 

"Oh,  Satan,  dear,"  he  weakly  cried, 

"My  punishment  is  great! 
I  ask  you,  beg  you  for  relief 

From  this,  my  low  estate?" 

"Whence  come  you,  Thing,  that  you  can  shrink 

From  tortures  Hell  may  hold? 
From  earth !     Indeed,  I  thought  that  world 

Spewed  phantoms  tough  and  bold." 

"How  can  an  earth-tried  spirit  come 

To  Hell  and  feel  its  pain? 
I  think  you're  shamming — get,  you  Thing — 

Into  the  flames  again." 


134  Prison    Problems 

THE  PAST. 

I  am  the  past,  the  evil,  the  fiend  of  leering  gaze, 
The  shape  you  dare  not  question,    the    ghost    of 
traveled  ways; 

I  am  that  which  you  have  hidden 

But  shall  ever  come  unbidden, 

To  break  the  peace  of  solitude 

And  make  you  curse  your  days. 

Wherever  you  may  wander,  your  heart  is  mine  to 

guide ; 
However  bold  your  features,  you'll  fear  me  at  your 

side; 

Though  with  men  you  may  decry  me 
Or  by  silence  may  deny  me, 
You  know  my  scorn  can  sear  your  soul 
And  blast  your  lofty  pride. 

The  tenderer  your  conscience,  the  deeper  sinks  my 

sting; 
The  dearer  be  your  visions,  the  closer  shall  I  cling; 

I,  that  poison  love  and  beauty, 

I,  who  threaten  hope  and  duty, 

Shall  make  you  writhe  and  know  yourself — 

A  doubting,  craven  thing. 

I  give  a  sickly  pallor  to  what  you  dare  to  do; 
I  make  your  blood  and  honor  and  faith  to  flow  un- 
true ; 

I  flay,  then  turn  and  taunt  you, 

By  night  or  day  I  haunt  you 

To  goad  you  on  unceasingly 

From  ancient  grief  to  new. 


Prison    Problems  135 

I  am  the  past,  the  evil;  I  smite  you  with  a  rod; 
Upon  your  soul  I  trample,  my  feet  are  iron-shod ; 

I  shall  jeer  you  ever,  ever, 

Shall  forsake  you  never,  never, 

Shall  go  with  you  to  the  end 

And  mock  you  by  your  God. 


BLOOM-TIDE. 

Far  to  the  East,  and  high,  a  flush  of  gold ; 

Below,  the  earth-lines  merge  in  black  and  gray; 
Then,  as  the  night-mists  stir  and  float  away 

On  perfumed  breezes — up  from  the  dew-starred 

mold 
A  myriad  melodies  are  flung;  earth-bold 

They  echo  on  and  on.    New  buds  and  bloom  dis- 
play 
Their  glory  proudly.     Sun-pulsed  comes  the  Day 

And  Man  and  Beast  awake.     Man,  up!     Behold, 
Gone  is  the  winter,  and  enthroned  is  Spring — 

Forever  gone  those  cheerless  cloud-tombed  hours 
Of  yesterday.    Arise,  and  swell  the  tune 

Of  kindled  life  until  the  echoes  ring 
Up  to  the  sky,  so  He,  who  planned  the  flowers 

And  all,  may  hear  your  gratitude  for  June. 


EFFICIENCY. 

Life  is  but  loss,  and  from  it  all 

He  gains  the  most  who  takes  the  best ; 

Who  looks  for  neither  rise  nor  fall 
But  loves  his  doing  for  its  test. 


136  Prison    Problems 


THE  BALANCE. 

On  fancy's  height  in  castled  dream 
I  tried  to  build  both  strong  and  well ; 

Beyond  the  night  I  saw  the  gleam, 
That  brought  far  heaven  to  my  cell. 

I  wrought  to  score  my  humble  name 
In  other  than  the  sands  of  time, 

To  turn  to  gold  the  dross  of  shame 
That  law  grinds  out  of  common  crime. 

So  I  was  free;  each  prison  bar 

Was  spaced  for  me  as  star  to  star; 

The  muted  silence  of  the  cell 

Held  naught  but  flesh  within  its  spell. 

Now  pause  I  near  the  iron-jawed  gate — 
I  would  go  singing  on  my  way — 

Leap  from  this  rock-ribbed  pit  of  hate 
Free  both  in  spirit  and  in  clay. 

Yet,  hesitant,  I  look  beyond 

For  that  which  is,  means  much  to  me, 
I  weigh  the  worthy  hearts  here  found 

Against  the  heart  I'll  find  when  free. 

And  lo,  the  balance  tells  me  not 

Which  weigh  the  more — this  sin-bruised  lot, 
Or  those  with  sins,  brought  not  to  light, 

Who  dwell  beyond  this  house  of  night ! 


Prison    Problems  137 


LAHK  I  NEVAH  CARE. 

Always  trouble,  trouble,  hoodoos  evahwhere! 
So  Ah  keep  ah-movin'  lahk  Ah  nevah  care. 

Soldjah  in  de  battle,  bullets  flyin'  fas' 

Dohn  waste  time  ah-duckin',  hopin'  'at  he'll  las'. 

Soldjah  mighty  busy  lahk  he  nevah  care; 
Ain't  no  time  foh  dodgin',  bullets  evahwhere. 

See  de  debil  comin',  ain't  no  use  toh  run, 
He  kin  do  de  hot-foot,  beat  yoh  jes  foh  fun. 

Bettah  stan'  an'  face  'im,  lahk  yoh  nevah  care; 
Boun'  toh  get  yoh  sometime,  debil's  evahwhere. 

Ef  de  sun  ain't  shinin',  guess  it  shine  some  day; 
Dohn  b'lieve  it  nohow,  sun  kin  go  toh  stay. 

Whistle  froo  de  dahkness  lahk  Ah  nevah  care; 
Ain't  no  use  in  mournin'  dahkness  evahwhere. 

Scholar  mans  dey  tell  me  dat  the  worl'  am  roun'; 
Can't  side-step  from  off  it,  dohn  care  where  yoh 
boun'. 

Spec  dah's  tears  an'  heart-aches  mos'ly  evahwhere, 
So  Ah  totes  mah  trouble  lahk  Ah  nevah  care. 


138  Prison    Problems 


LYIN'  IN  DE  SHADE. 

Breezy  on  de  margins,  breezy  all  within, 

Feel  lahk  God's  foun'  me,  took  ahway  mah  sin. 

Bobolink  ah-singin'  "Phu — tu-weet!  tu-weet!" 
Sunshine  jas  ah-sizzlin'  ovah  yondah  wheat. 

Wondah  if  Ah's  lazy  layin'  in  de  shade, 
Lookin'  at  de  beauty  dat  de  Lord's  made? 

Sunny  on  de  margins,  sunshine  ovah  all 
Feel  lahk  God's  nevah  made  ah  man  toh  fall. 

All  de  worl'  am  callin'  askin'  me  toh  dine, 
Hush  dah!   Heah  de  cohnfiel'?  "Brudder,  won't  yoh 
jine?" 

Leaves  ah  rustlin',  rustlin',  jes  's  if  dey  say, 
"Cohn  am  mighty  lushus  bout  dis  time  o'  day." 

Yondah  watah-millyun — Golly !  how  he  grin ! ! 
See  de  stripes  ah  winkin'  lahk  de  eyes  of  sin. 

Guess  Ah  go  on  farther,  can't  stay  heah  at  all ! 
By  'm  by  its  darker,  den  Ah'll  make  a  call. 

Rooster  he  am  crowin',  "Ut-et-uu !  et-uuu !" 
Wondah  ef  he's  tellin'  what  Ah's  gwine  toh  do? 

Bet  a  silvah  dollah  rooster'll  fin'  de  pot 
Wen  de  night  am  sulky,  an'  de  watah  hot. 


Prison    Problems  139 

Howdy,  Massah  Johnson!    Howdy,  Massah  Ted! 
Wha  dat?     Massah  Johnson!  Heah  each  word  Ah 
said? 

Lordy,  Massah  Johnson,  Ah  jes'  makes  b'lieve 
Dat  Ah  makes  up  p'otry,  da's  all,  jes'  b'lieve. 

Golly !  dat  a  close  un !   Won't  ask  dem  toh  jine 
Wen  de  meal  am  ready,  w'en  de  things  am  mine. 


JUNE. 

When  you  see  me  listen,  no  one  near  at  all, 
June  from  breezy  hilltops  sends  a  throaty  call. 

Should  I  wear  a  stare  and  grin  that's  near  sublime. 
Know  my  soul  is  outward  with  the  hymning-time? 

If  you  hear  me  singing  in  a  wordless  croon, 
Know  my  heart  is  talking  to  the  heart  of  June. 

June,  the  merry  maiden,  tiptoe  in  her  glee, 
Calling,  calling,  calling  to  the  heart  of  me! 

June — and  I  have  heard  her ! — That's  the  reason  why 
I  am  looking  outward,  upward  to  the  sky. 

June  she  courts  a  fellow  as  a  maiden  should — 
Brings  so  much  of  glory  that  she  makes  him  good. 

Never  yields  a  promise ;  hers  are  simply  deeds — 
Gifts  of  love  and  kindness — things  a  fellow  needs. 


140  Prison    Problems 

Pansies  for  his  garden,  daisies  for  the  field, 
Clover  in  the  open,  violets  concealed. 

Juicy  fruits  for  hunger  when  the  day  star  gleams, 
Scented  breeze  for  kisses,  spangled  shade  for  dreams. 

Like  a  vestal  virgin,  that  is  what  she  is — 
Knowing  not,  nor  caring,  what  be  hers  or  his. 

Giving  all  for  nothing — if  your  heart  be  young 
And  you  come  to  woo  her  with  a  singing  tongue. 

Oh,  to  be  a  laddie  just  to  go  along 

Up  to  knees  in  clover,  heaven-high  in  song! 

Oh,  to  be  a  laddie  with  a  soul  of  worth — 
Careless  of  the  import  of  the  heedless  earth! 

There  would  be  no  shadow  hung  between  the  sun 
And  the  unblazed  pathway  that  my  life  must  run. 

There  would  be  no  straining  of  the  weary  mind 
For  a  faint  reflection  of  the  joys  behind. 

Living  would  be  pleasure,  summer  would  be  joy — 
That's  enough  of  import  for  a  healthy  boy. 

June  would  be  a  present  from  the  very  throne, 
Sent  by  the  Great  Father  for  my  very  own. 

There  would  be  no  blackness  at  the  hour  of  noon 
Were  I  but  a  laddie  and  afield  with  June. 

Little  pagan  lordling,  singing  in  the  sun, 

I  would  live,  not  pray  it,  "Lord,  thy  will  be  done." 


Prison    Problems  141 

DE  COOPAH-BONE. 

Ah  has  ah  premonition — 

Wha'  dat !     why,  say  yoh  fool, 
What  am  de  tings  dey  teach  yoh 

Up  in  dat  prison  school? 
Ah  premonition's  sumfin' 

A  talkin'  in  yoh  eah 
Erbout  ah  ting  toh  happen 

Befoh  de  ting  am  heah. 
Ah  has  ah  premonition 

Dat  on  T'anksgibin'  day 
Ah'll  prance  in  foh  mah  dinnah, 

An'  Ah'll  be  feelin'  gay. 
Ah'll  sit  down  toh  de  table, 

An'  den  Ah  know  Ah'll  groan — 
Mah  premonition  tells  me 

Dar'll  be  no  coopah-bone. 
Mos'  any  part  of  turkey 

Am  worth  yoh  while  toh  eat, 
But,  u-um!  foh  juicy  sweetness 

De  coopah's  hard  to  beat. 
An'  Ah  jes  feels  it,  Buddy — 

Mah  dice  of  fate  am  thrown — 
Ah'll  round  up  on  dat  dinnah 

An'  miss  de  coopah-bone. 
Now  dohn  yoh  t'ink  Ah'm  kickin', 

Foh  Ah,  Ah  t'inks  lahk  dis: 
No  bit  of  use  toh  grumble 

At  all  de  tings  yoh  miss. 
It's  bes'  toh  grin  at  sorrow 

Or  leave  yoh  fate  alone, 
Although  on  all  T'anksgibins 

Yoh  miss  de  coopah-bone. 


142  Prison    Problems 

KOLLIN'  DE  BONES. 

Seben  come  'leben — roll  'long  bones! 

Hop-pah  dice  an-ah  git  'im ! 
Done  throwed  eight — roll  on  bones ! 

Hop-pah  dice  an-ah  hit  'im ! 
Little  Jo! — an-ah  dime  Ah  come — 

(Fade  me,  fellah,  quick!) 
Money  heah  an-ah  sure  git  some — 

(Ride  me,  fellah,  quick!) 
Di-se-dice — an-ah  hit  'im  hard ! 

Roll  up  seben — an-ah  bim  'im  hard ! 
Down  in  Georgia — come  again — 
Mama's  due  on  de  railroad  train. 
Big  Dick  dat?    u-um  Lordy  Lord! 
Hit  'im  dice  an-ah  hit  'im  hard! 
Baby  want  ah-new  shoes, 
Baby  want  ah-new  shoes — 
Eighty  days  an-ah  great  Big  Dick! 

Eighty — git  dat  money  quick — 
Hop-pah  dice,  an-ah  Richard  come! 
Hop-pah  dice,  an-ah  hit  dat  bum! 
Hi  yi — Dice !   jes  roll  'im  dumb ! 

Dice-ee-dice — an-ah  Richard  come! 
Eight  she  is! — Dat's  rollin'  some! 

Dime  Ah  Play. 


TOH  MAKE  DE  HOODOO  GET. 

Ef  yoh  shud  go  ah-walkin' 

Aneath  de  open  sky 
Jes  w'en  de  moon  am  drunk'n 

An'  not  ah  soul  am  nigh, 


Prison    Problems  143 

An'  heah  de  night-owls  hootin' 
Jes  lahk  dey  wuz  toh  die ; 
An'  heah  de  bullfrogs  tootin' — 

An'  yoh  dat  skeart  yoh'd  fly — 
Jes  stop  an'  fin'  yoh  shadder, 

Den  mahk  jes  whar  it  stays, 
Den  stomp  yoh  feet  upon  it 

An'  cross  yoh  hands  dis  ways, 
Den  bow  tohwahds  er  medder, 

An'  turn  right  whar  yoh  stand, 
An'  den,  why,  den — doggone  it! 

Jes  run  toh  beat  de  band ! 
De  hoodo  den  cahn't  catch  yoh — 

Jes  run  toh  beat  de  band. 


ECSTACY. 

Voices  in  de  tree-tops 

Wen  de  breezes  pass, 
Whispers  in  de  cohnfiel' 

An'  de  humble  grass. 
What  yoh  'spec  dey's  sayin- 

Grass  an'  cohn  an'  tree?- 
Sayin',  Miss  Lucinda 

Gave  her  love  toh  me ! 

Sunshine  on  de  meadow, 

On  de  hill  an'  wood — 
Jes  ah  golden  glory 

Dat  am  berry  good. 
Why  yoh  tink   it's   shinin' 

Lahk  it  nevah  shone? — 
Shinin'  kase  Lucinda 

Said  she'll  be  mah  own. 


144  Prison    Problems 


REFORMED. 

Ah  hasn't  jined   no  Temp'rance  but 

Ah's  cut  de  licker  out, 
An'  knows  exactly  why  Ah  has 

An'  jes'  what  Ah's  erbout; 
Ah's  lahk  de  man  de  Good  Book  says 

Declared  de  worl'  is  vain 
Bekase  he  couldn't  fin'  ah  way 

Toh  cheer  his  soul  again. 

Dey's  hit  mah  solah  plexus  wif 

Ah  legal  uppah-cut, 
Dey's  put  me  where  de  licker  talk 

Dohn  have  no  if  an'  but ; 
Dere's  iron  bars  aroun'  me 

An'  great  thick  walls  of  stone — 
Ah  hasn't  jined  no  Temp'rance  but 

Ah  leaves  de  drink  alone. 


RAPTURE. 

Nachur  in  de  mornin' 

Toots  ah  golden  fife, 
Keeps  yohr  feet  ah-dancin' 

Toh  de  song  of  Life. 
Asks  yoh,  "Is  yoh  livin'  " 

On  de  edge  of  tings, 
So  yoh  dasn't  nevah 

Cut  no  pigeonwings  ?" 


Prison    Problems  145 

Nachur  chuckles  "Howdy," 

Den  she  plays  ah  tune 
Jes  as  ef  she  nevah 

Knew  ah  ting  but  June. 
Mebbe  yoh  dohn  hear  her, 

Mebbe  yoh  dohn  care — 
Bless  me!     Yoh's  foolish 

As  er  crazy  hare. 

Mebbe  Ah  hears  music 

From  de  Ian'  an'  sea 
Kase  Ah  love  Lucinda 

An'  de  gal  loves  me. 


BETROSPECTION. 

A  streak  of  dun  and  dusty  road, 

A  ragged  patch  of  green, 
A  bit  of  blue  that  God  has  sowed 

Till  tree-tops  intervene. 
A  little  gray,  unpainted  shed 

The  branches  strive  to  screen — 
Ashamed,  the  thing  has  backward  fled, 

Like  humble  work  and  mean. — 

A  corner  of  a  house  before, 

A  trellis  by  my  side — 
This  is  the  spot  which  I  adore, 

This  is  the  "world  so  wide." 
Beneath  the  trees  a  hammock  swings 

With  whisperings  by  my  side, 
I  sway  into  remembered  springs — 

But  God !    Oh,  God !   she  died. 


146  Prison    Problems 


SONNET  I. 

How  now?     Give  thanks!     This  is  Thanksgiving 

day. 

What  are  the  mercies  that  have  been  bestowed 
On  us?    When  has  our  "Cup  of  Life"  o'erflowed 

That  we  should  seek  for  words  our  thanks  to  say? 
Go,  friend,  and  offer  thanks,  if  you  have  sowed 
And  reaped ;  go,  thank  Him  for  the  precious  load 

The  harvest-fields  have  yielded ;  go,  obey 

The  promptings  of  your  gladdened  souls,  and  pray. 

The  scorching  noonday  suns,  the  bootless  quest 
In  famine-stricken  fields ;  hands  filled  with  chaff 
With   which   to   feed   our   souls — now   hungered 
long— 

And  ever,  ever,  seeking  and  unrest — 

These  are  the  joys  we  find  upon  our  path; 
For  these  you  ask  a  grateful  prayer  or  song! 


SONNET  H. 

"Oh,  If  we  come,"  you  plead,  "just  come  and  pray 
Unto  the  One  whose  kindly  grace  will  heal 
The  aching  heart,  the  bruise  we  would  conceal, 

The  fever  of  the  woe  that  burns  alway — 

Then  would  we  learn  how  sweet  it  is  to  feel 
Ourselves  made  glad — how  good  it  is  to  kneel 

And  from  a  humble,  grateful  heart  to  say: 

'Dear  Lord,  all  life  is  one  Thanksgiving  day.'  " 


Prison    Problems  147 

Yes,  if  we  come — as  long-ago  we  came 

And  knelt  and  folded  little  hands  and  said 
"Now  I  lay."    You,  perhaps,  may  come  like  this 

And,  child-pure,  whisper  in  the  Father's  name, 
But  friends,  our  white-robed  innocence  is  dead, 
We  have  no  thanks  to  give  for  what  we  miss. 


SONNET 

BEHOLD,  we  come.  Half-ashamed,  we  bend  a  knee 
To  render  thanks  for  what  our  hearts  may  find 
Is  worth  our  gratitude.  Half-shamed,  tear-blind, 

And  faint  from  longing,  Lord,  to  pray  to  Thee: 
We  thank  Thee  that  all  men  are  less  unkind 
Than  men  could  be.  We  thank  Thee  that  the  grind 

Of  life  has  sometimes  spared  the  weak ;  that  destiny 

Holds  hope,  and  slaves  may  dream  of  days  to  be. 

Dear  Lord,  our  shredded  lives  are  splashed  with 

tears — 

We  cannot  read  the  writing  on  the  wall ; 
We  walked  with  want  upon  a  lonesome  way — 
With  memories  clinging  to  those  famished  years; 
Yet,  Lord,  we  thank  Thee,  though  remembering 

all, 
That  others  have  a  bright  Thanksgiving  day. 


SONNET  IV. 

Within  the  prison  place,  where  grievous  rules 
Deny  the  right  of  one  to  sing  aloud 
Or  voice  in  trembling  words  the  thoughts  that 
crowd 


148  Prison    Problems 

The   mind  which   longs   for   speech    with    brother 

fools — 

Within  the  bounded  space  where  men  are  dumb 
Or  talk  with  guarded  lip  and  cautious  eye, 
I  learn  that  many  are  who  overcome 
The  things  that  bid  the  soul  of  song  to  die. 

I  know  not  how  or  why  this  truth  should  be ; 
I  only  know  that  he  whose  heart  is  filled 
With  strains  of  eloquence  from  earth  and  sea 

And  vagrant  ways,  escapes  much  misery; 
He  holds  in  keep  a  music  rarely  stilled, 
And  from  the  law  he  hates,  is  often  free. 


SONNET  V. 

Hold  back  the  curtain  for  one  moment,  Death, 
And  let  me  gaze  into  your  mystic  land 
Of  silence.     Let  me  but  see  the  hand 

Of  God  record  eternity.    A  breath 

Is  life,  and  I  would  know,  would  understand 
What  means  this  little  breath  that  we  command. 

If  it  mean  much,  I  beg  a  shibboleth — 

A  pass  to  Death,  and  to  return  from  Death. 

So  pleaded  poets,  seers  of  bygone  days, 

When  men  could  hope  to  wake  a  world  with  song 
Or  read  the  scroll  that  time  holds  ever  furled. 

My  children,  heed :     We  needs  must  go  the  ways 
Of   Life   and    Death,    must   go,   both    right   and 

wrong ; 
If  you  would  see  and  know — behold  the  world. 


Prison    Problems  149 

SONNET  VI. 

MY  FATHER,  Lord,  why  should  I  call  to  Thee 
With   wild,   impassioned   pleas,   for   strength   or 

light 
Or  aid  or  grace?     I  look  into  the  night, 

And  love,  thy  love  is  there — and  it  is  free ; 

And  eyes  of  faith  can  read  the  words  I  write: 
"Mine  is  the  hope  about  thy  soul.     By  might 

Of  mine,  and  love  for  Thee,  is  held  in  fee 

Eternity."    This  is  enough  for  me. 

So,  Lord,  I  have  no  little  prayer  to  say, 

Nor  plaint  to  make  for  change  in  anything 
Which  Thou  hast  made,  and  men  call  right  or 

wrong, 
At  times  I  start  to  murmur  at  the  day 

But,  'tween  the  heart  and  lips  which  call  Thee 

King, 
The  words  that  I  would  say  are  turned  to  song. 


THE  LASKEY. 

They  talked  of  him  and  said :    "He  tries 

To  be  a  faithful  man" ; 
They  did  not  know  his  deeds  were  lies 

He  cursed  them  while  he  ran. 

Yet,  they  who  ruled  approved  of  him ; 

For  power  has  no  plan 
Nor  ways  to  get  beyond  the  rim 

Of  man  and  to  the  man. 


150  Prison    Problems 


FAME'S  COURIER. 

Awake ! 

The  dawn  is  here! 
And  day  waits  near; 

Make  haste — 
Each  moment  lost 
But  swells  the  cost 

Of  waste; 

Shake  off  the  dreams  of  ancient  schemes- 
Awake  ! 

Awake ! 

Up,  lead  the  race 
At  such  a  pace 
Men  smile 
Or  cheer  your  aim 
And  shout  your  name — 

Worth  while 
To  idly  wait  or  hesitate? 
Awake ! 

Awake ! 

Come,  stake  your  all 
For  rise  or  fall ; 

A  guess? 
No!     For  the  man 
Who  leads  the  van, 

Success 

Waits  to  proclaim  his  honored  name! 
Awake ! 


Prison    Problems  151 


SPBINGL 

I  sing  of  Spring! 

But  prison  walls  surround  me, 

The  prison  gloom  is  mine, 
My  brooding  thoughts  have  bound   me 
To  seasons  where  the  wine 

Of  Spring 
Is  not  a  draught  divine. 

To  sing  of  Spring? 

With  petty  rules  to  trouble 

The  souls  that  mourn  alone. 
With  cold,  dead  hopes  that  double 
The  chilling  crush  of  stone — 

Of  Spring? 
When  freedom  lacks  a  throne! 

To  sing  of  Spring? 

To  chant  in  tuneful  measures 

Of  life  by  laughter  led, 
When  all  of  earth's  young  pleasures 
Are  dying  or  are  dead ! 

Of  Spring? 
When  youth  is  dead ! 

To  sing  of  Spring 

The  heart  and  mind  must  answer 
The  speech  of  birds  and  grass, 
Must  be  a  gay  romancer 
Of  miracles  which  pass 

Of  Springs 
That  come  and  pass. 


152  Prison    Problems 


SHADOWS. 

I  see  gray  shadows  climb  a  hill 

And  sway  toward  the  west; 
I  hear  a  song  bird's  plaintive  trill, 

He  calls  his  mate  to  rest; 
Warm  breezes,  cloyed  with  rose  perfume, 

Sigh  soft  from  shrub  to  tree; 
The  sun  sinks  slowly  to  its  tomb 

Of  time  beyond  the  sea. 

Just  where  the  sun's  last  molten  ray 

Burns  red  across  the  brine, 
And  rose-hued  shines  upon  the  bay 

So  water  glows  like  wine; 
Two  lovers  in  a  boat  adrift 

Are  blended  with  the  scene, 
And  through  a  cloud-bank's  narrow  rift 

They  view  their  soul's  demesne. 

Soft  lights,  soft  grays,  and  dreaming  love: 

"Oh,"  sighed  I,  "earth  is  fair ! 
And  hearts  beat  warm ;  is  God  above 

Always  to  curb  despair?" 
And  then  I  turned ;  my  heart  went  sore ; 

Where  day  was  whelmed  by  night, 
I  saw  an  old  man  bowed  before 

A  tombstone's  ghastly  white. 


Prison    Problems  153 


A  FOOL'S  ART. 

Music?    No,  friend,  I  can't  pretend 

To  know  a  thing  about  it; 
But  I  revere  its  noisy  cheer 

Whenever  children  shout  it. 
Just  boys  and  girls  in  shifting  whirls 

And  streaks  of  play  and  laughter, 
That  seems  to  me  like  music  free — 

The  kind  that  God  looks  after. 

A  dirty  face,  without  a  trace 

Of  beauty  as  you  see  it 
Can  be  a  sight  that's  lined  aright 

By  Art — as  masters  see  it. 
Perhaps  your  creed  and  mine  may  need 

To  clash  a  bit  together; 
Artistic  joys  and  girls  and  boys 

Alive  in  any  weather. 

A  little  girl  can  set  awhirl 

My  scanty  hopes  of  heaven; 
I  hear  her  laugh  and  fail  to  scoff — 

And  Lord !     She's  only  seven. 
I  don't  despise  the  chunks  of  cries 

And  pudgy  bits  of  trouble; 
A  baby's  squall  is  never  all — 

Its  "goo"  is  pleasure  double. 

I'm  just  a  fool  of  nary  school 
With  little  time  for  preachers — 

Don't  need  to  look  in  any  book 
When  wee  folks  are  the  teachers. 


154  Prison    Problems 

They're  book  enough,  and  tame  or  rough, 
When  one  has  learned  to  love  them; 

The  slicked-up  head,  the  tousled  head — 
God  guide  the  fools  above  them! 

Oh,  yes,  I  pray ;  that's  all  I  say : 
"Make  wise  the  fools  above  them!" 

'Tis  only  fair  that  He  should  care — 
I  can't  do  more  than  love  them. 


MEMORIES. 

The  new  morn's  sun,  across  the  way, 

Had  turned  night's  tears  to  gold, 
And  blazed  a  path  for  blushing  day 

Across  the  dew-wet  mold, 
When  I,  with  prison  bars  between 

My  earth,  heaven,  and  hell, 
Gazed  out  upon  the  rise  of  green 

That  lies  before  my  cell. 

A  fair-haired  boy  of  tender  years 

Romped  on  the  velvet  sod, 
And  as  I  gazed  forbidden  tears 

Welled  in  my  eyes — and,  God! — 
The  morn,  the  child,  the  slope  of  green, 

The  sunlight's  mellow  glow, 
Recalled  to  me  a  memoried  scene, 

And  joys  I  used  to  know. 

The  memoried  scene  was  of  my  youth, 
My  childhood,  and  my  play, 


Prison    Problems  155 

When  all  my  paths  were  paved  with  truth, 

When  life  was  ever  gay; 
When  I,  a  child,  unspoiled,  unstained, 

Dreamed  life  was  but  a  song — 
But  now — Ah,  now — by  sin  profaned, 

I  know  the  price  of  wrong! 

I  steeled  my  heart  (the  night  I  came 

Within  the  prison  gate) 
To  pay  my  debt  with  voiceless  shame, 

To  stifle  love  with  hate; 
To  still  my  sobs,  my  hopes,  my  fears, 

But  when  I  saw  that  child, 
I  welcomed  back  love,  hope,  and  tears, 

I  mourned,  and,  mourning,  smiled. 


GKACELESS. 

To  lie  in  a  convict  graveyard, 

To  mix  with  the  graceless  dead — 
No  word  of  glory  near  me? 

No  marble  above  my  head? 
But  there  is  the  earth  around  me, 

The  arch  of  the  sky  above, 
And  how  can  a  sculptured  marble 

Be  sign  of  a  greater  love? 

I  smile  at  your  words  of  pity, 
For  what  is  a  stone  to  one 

Asleep  in  the  breast  of  nature 
With  all  of  his  toiling  done? 


156  Prison    Problems 


OPTIMIST'S  MORNING  SONG. 

With  joyful  heart  bid  night  depart, 

Then  greet 

The  victor,  Fate,  across  the  gate 
Where  manly  toil  wins  honest  spoil, 

Life's  sweet, 
Cursed  by  no  debt  of  dull  regret, 

Arise ! 

Arise ! 

Blot  out  the  thought  that  life  has  brought 

But  pain; 

Forget  the  scars,  the  falls,  the  jars, 
The  foolish  fears  of  woeful  years — 

All  vain! 
And  sing  in  praise  of  better  days, 

Arise ! 

Arise ! 

Go  breathe  the  air  that's  free  from  care 

Or  wrong; 

And  let  your  heart  its  joy  impart 
In  kindly  smiles,  in  laughing  whiles, 

In  song — 
In  heart-whole  cheer  for  what  is  here, 

Arise ! 

Arise ! 

Oh,  man  or  maid  be  not  afraid 

Of  day, 

Give  it  your  youth,  your  soul  of  truth, 
Your  fearless  life  and  reckon  strife  as  play, 

Arise ! 


Prison   Problems  157 

THE  KING'S  CEY. 

I  saw  a  king  the  other  day 

I  know  he  was  a  king, 
Because  he  went  along  his  way 

As  proud  as  anything. 
His  step  so  light,  "his  eyes  so  bright 

And  full  of  mischief-laughter, 
So  puzzled  me,  I  turned  to  see 

His  court  a-coming  after. 

But  no;  the  king  was  all  alone, 

His  troubles  far  behind; 
There  was  no  pomp  to  make  him  groan, 

No  flattery  to  blind. 
All  by  himself,  a  trousered  elf 

So  filled  with  his  own  glory 
That  I  could  read  (and  had  no  need 

Of  book  to  learn  his  story). 

"The  king,"  I  mused,  "is  glad  because 

He's  lost  his  court  of  clowns — 
The  funny  folk  who  make  his  laws, 

And  lord  it  in  his  towns. 
He's  now  about — "  just  then  a  shout 

Came  from  the  kingly  rover. 
And  what  he  said  sings  in  my  head : 

"Hey,  Billy!    School  is  over!" 


ENERGY. 

The  uplift  man  is  always  one 
Who's  sawing  fit  to  bust; 

Who  works  as  if  he  surely  knows 
That  Rest  is  only  Rust. 


158  Prison    Problems 


IN  DEEAMS. 

In  dreams  your  eyes  peer  into  mine, 

In  dreams  I  see  you  yet, 
The  loving  one  I  should  resign, 

The  maid  I  would  forget. 

You  seem  as  young,  as  sweet,  and  fair 

As  when  long  years  ago 
I  smoothed  your  wealth  of  tangled   hair, 

And  kissed  you  so,  and  so. 

We  wander  on  a  sunlit  day 
And  come  to  hills  and  streams; 

You  gather  violets  by  the  way, 
I  watch  you  in  my  dreams. 

Your  curving  cheek,  a  wisp  of  hair 

That  flutters  in  the  breeze, 
Your  mingled,  shy  and  care-free  air, 

I  note  such  things  as  these. 

Why  must  these  prison  halls  be  filled 

With  meadows,  sunlit,  wide? 
Why  should  I  be  so  strangely  thrilled 

When  you  are  at  my  side? 

Long  since  I  wrote  beneath  my  fate: 

"Let  love  and  longing  die," 
Yet,  breathlessly,  and,  dear,  too  late, 

I  watch  you  passing  by. 


Prison    Problems  159 

With  wistful  eyes  I  look  again 

To  value  love's  sweet  cost, 
Nor  can  I  make  my  heart  refrain 

From  longing  for  the  lost. 

The  vision  fades  and,  lo!  I  sit 

Within  my  prison  cell 
Where  sorrows  wait,  and  evils  flit 

Between  my  heart  and  Hell. 

And  yet,  because  I  dreamed  of  you, 

And  walked  where  once  we  trod, 
I  nearer  am  to  love,  the  true, 

I  closer  am  to  God. 


IDOL  OF  LOVE. 

The  Idol  of  love  lies  broken, 

Its  ruins  are  here  at  my  feet — 
Kisses,  and  each  joyous  token 

That  once  made  worshipping  sweet; 
Soul,  and  a  love-light  tender 

That  beamed  for  me  in  her  eyes ; 
Hope,  and  a  dear  dream's  splendor — 

Dead,  and  unworthy  of  sighs. 

Idol  of  fire  and  glory, 

Crumbled  as  time  crumbles  clay! 
God ! — and  I  told  a  heart's  story 

Unto  this  thing  one  day! 
Spoke  with  my  thrilled  lips  of  passion, 

Prayed  with  a  boy's  stumbling  tongue- 
O  woe  for  the  idols  we  fashion 

If  the  heart  of  the  maker  be  young! 


160  Prison    Problems 

The  idol  of  love  is  broken 

Thing  that  I  worshipped  as  one 
Who,  thinking-  his  dear  God  has  spoken, 

Dreams  that  all  heaven  is  won; 
O,  it  had  deep  eyes  of  dreaming! 

And  love-light  there  burned  for  a  day ! 
No  wonder  I  worshipped  this  seeming, 

This  idol  that  was  only  clay. 

Idol  of  fire  and  glory, 

Maid  whom  I  thought  was  divine — 
Whose  laugh  was  a  musical  story — 

Whose  smiles  could  enthrall  me  like  wine, 
It  is  that  your  soul  has  departed, 

The  mystery  of  you  is  dispelled, 
That  I  am  as  one  broken-hearted, 

With  sorrow  that  will  not  be  quelled. 


THE  "NEAB  POET." 

I  have  no  storied  thunder 
That  outward  may  be  hurled 

To  wake,  to  startled  wonders ; 
This  listless,  working  world. 

Nor  have  I  angel  voices 

Wherewith  to  pulse  my  song, 

So  he  who  hears  rejoices 

And  smiles  the  whole  day  long. 

Yet  life,  dear  life,  forever 

I  turn  to  poesy  sweet; 
And  write  lest  I  should  never 

Have  coins  for  bread  and  meat. 


Prison    Problems  161 


A  SHUT-IN'S  SPRING  SONG. 

I  love  to  watch  the  dawn's  dream  hush, 

The  turn  of  gloom  to  gray; 
It  comes  so  like  a  pure  maid's  blush — 

Too  fair  and  sweet  to  stay; 
It  leaves  the  sky  a  crimson  flush, 

A  smile  for  earth  and  day. 

I  love  to  meet  the  first-born  breeze 

That  stirs  the  leafy  boughs, 
To  listen  to  the  birds  and  bees 

Re-sing  their  matin  vows — 
To  sense  the  life  of  things  like  these 

And  feel  my  heart  arouse. 

I  love  to  greet  the  new  morn's  sun, 

Its  kiss  to  gain,  to  hold 
And  have  new  strength  for  heights  unwon, 

Or  find  my  heart  more  bold, 
As  I  with  lighter  footsteps  run 

To  work  that  brings  no  gold. 

I  love  to  live!  the  earth  is  fair; 

There  is  God's  mellow  sun ; 
A  hint  of  flowers  in  the  air, 

And  sounds  of  childish  fun — 
I  turn  to  look,  but  everywhere 

My  view  with  steel  is  spun ! 


162  Prison    Problems 

A  SPRING  IDYL. 

An  alien  song-bird  in  a  tree 
Sat  singing  to  his  alien  mate; 

Two  lovers  heard  his  minor  key 

And,  lover-like,  they  would  translate. 

SHE 

He  sings,  she  said,  of  summers  when 

A  day  is  fit  to  live  in, 
And,  unafraid  of  gunning  men, 

One  dares  a  song  to  heaven ; 
One  dares  to  sing  his  soul-self  free, 

Nor  look  alarmed  at  shadows, 
Nor  start  at  sudden  booms  of  bee 

Or  cloud-shade  on  the  meadows. 

HE 

He  sings,  he  said,  a  boastful  song 

Of  how  he'll  sing  forever, 
And  how  his  love  as  life  is  long, 

Though  this  be  ended  never! 
Hear  that?  he  chirps,  "Tu  weet  c-cheet!" 

It  means  "God's  peace  above  you !" 
And  now,  "Ee-eee !"  "a  fine  day,  sweet !" 

"Tu  Kee !"  and  "Oh,  I  love  you !" 
And  when  he  pipes  in  little  turns, 

Our  feathered  music-spender 
Tells  to  his  mate  how  much  he  yearns 

To  be  more  kind  and  tender; 
"Ti-ee,"  "I  shall,"  "e-ees,"  "be  true," 

"Tucee!"  "desert  you,  never!" 
"Twikee  cee  chee,"  "I'll  love  but  you," 

"Ceeeee !"— "forever !" 


Prison    Problems  163 

SHE 

He  sings,  she  said,  no  such  a  song! 

How  can  you  be  so  silly? 
You  talk  as  if  he  runs  along 

Just  like  a  smooth-tongued  Willie. 
A  bird  may  sing  his  soul  away, 

And  do  it  well,  and  gladly; 
A  man  may  tell  what  song-birds  say — 

But,  sir,  you've  told  it  badly. 
He  sings — um,  stop  !  he  si — quit,  John ! 

He  sings — You'll  make  me  cuff  you ! 
He  si — Oh,  you !     There,  now  he's  gone — 

Why,  yes,  of  course  I  love  you. 


LOVE  NOTES. 

Your  love  is  vain  and  dead?    Ah,  well, 

Go,  dear,  along  your  way, 
Forget  of  the  woven  spell 

Which  was,  for  but  a  day. 
I  will  not  lie  and  say  I  weep 

For  love  of  yours,  the  dead, 
May  silence  close  around  its  sleep, 

Deserted  be  its  bed. 
The  quickened  sense  that  droops  and  dies, 

Be  it  of  love  or  hate, 
But  proves  it  were  a  worthless  prize, 

Why  should  I  mourn  its  fate? 
For  love  or  hate  with  death  awing, 

Or  dead  for  days  or  years, 
Was,  living,  but  a  tortured  thing; 

Arid  dead,  not  worth  my  tears. 


164  Prison    Problems 

You  write  as  if  love  goes  amiss, 

Or  love  that  was  had  died, 
That  they  who  loved  may  never  kiss 

Nor  wander  side  by  side. 
Is  love  a  shape  with  eyes  and  hair? 

A  form  to  clasp  and  hold? 
And,  losing  these,  does  love  despair 

And  curse  the  spirit's  mold? 
Can  it  be  love  that  makes  complaint 

To  earth  and  moon  and  stars 
Because  its  mate  is  pale  and  faint 

And  caged  by  walls  and  bars? 
Love  finds  the  bars,  and  to  the  place 

Where  waits  the  captive  mate, 
It  calls  and  bids  a  heart  take  grace 

And  strength  for  any  fate. 

I  cannot  think  that  life  or  death 

May  alter  love  a  jot, 
That  it  is  vain,  is  but  a  breath 

Which  comes  and  then  is  not. 
If  love  were  vain,  a  thing  that  seems, 

What  draws  me  to  the  light? 
What  gives  a  glory  to  the  dreams 

I  dream  by  day  and  night? 
How  could  I  look  beyond  the  haze 

Wherein  I  wait,  entombed,  i 

And  have  no  sigh  for  vanished  days 

Nor  know  my  future  doomed? 
How  could  I  bear  a  soul  of^song 

With  all  my  present  pain 
And  bravely  walk  where  shadows  throng 

If  love,  and  life  were  vain? 


Prison    Problems  165 


It  may  be  that  your  love  is  dead 

Mine  is  unmourned  as  yet; 
There  is  no  sorrow  in  its  stead, 

No  ashes  of  regret. 
Nor  can  I  sound  a  note  of  care 

While  spirit  hands  renew 
The  flame  upon  the  altar  where 

I've  placed  my  dreams  of  you. 


A  SONG. 

Why  should  I  harbor  sorrow? 

Does  it  make  burdens  less? 
Bring  new  strength  for  tomorrow 

Or  enlarge  tenderness? 

A  day  or  so — a  moment ! 

Is  all  of  life  I  hold ; 
Why  should  I  myself  torment 

With  what  the  hours  unfold? 

Choose,  you,  the  fretful  morning, 
The  stern  or  worried  gaze, 

The  attitude  of  scorning 
The  joy  along  your  ways. 

For  me,  the  day  of  pleasure, 

The  way  not  overlong, 
A  child  to  spill  love's  measure, 

My  lilt  a  laddie's  song. 


166  Prison    Problems 


EASTER  LAY:    TO  THE  HEN. 

One  year  ago  I  did  not  know 
Our  prison  bill  of  fare,  ah,  no ! 
Nor  did  I  then  think  that  to  men 
I'd  praise  the  humble  cackling  hen. 
I  knew  that  farms  had  rural  charms 
Such  as  the  hen  and  her  alarms 
When  in  the  haze  of  pleasant  days 
She  cackles  o'er  her  spheriod  lays. 

I  knew  of  quests  for  hidden  nests 

Amid  a  storm  of  wild  protests, 

And  how  the  meek  may  have  a  beak 

With  which  to  pick  my  yellow  streak ; 

And  I  could  tell  the  thrilling  spell 

For  one  who  holds  a  broken  shell 

That  golden  drips  on  pouted  lips 

When  boyhood  from  straight  nature  sips. 

But,  oh,  not  then  could  I  to  men 
Have  said  one  word  to  praise  the  hen 
Or  mentioned  how  she  beats  the  sow 
Likewise  the  horned  or  muley  cow — 
It  took  a  year  of  dwelling  here 
To  learn  the  homely  hen  is  dear; 
Took  eggless  days  in  eggless  ways 
Before  I  thought  to  sing  her  lays ! 

Through  all  my  years  of  doubts  and  fears, 
Of  busted  hopes  and  warmed-up  tears, 
Is  seen  that  I  have  made  no  sigh, 
Until  my  pleasures  passed  me  by. 


Prison    Problems  167 

So  I  relate  it  must  be  Fate 
That  palmed  me  off  unto  the  State, 
So  that  my  pen  might  tell  all  men 
There's  poetry  in  the  cackling  hen. 


THE  HARVEST. 

My  eyes  looked  out,  the  harvest  throng 

Toiled  in  the  summer  sun; 
I  heard  them  sing  a  thankful  song 

After  their  task  was  done — 
I  wondered  why  they  all  passed  by 

The  prison,  one  by  one. 

The  hills  were  robed  in  faded  gold ; 

The  lowlands,  bare  and  gray; 
The  harvest  lay  safe  in  the  hold, 

Stored  for  a  winter  day; 
The  reaper's  meed,  the  miser's  greed, 

The  toiler's  honest  pay. 

The  hills  and  fields  woke  memories 

Dear  to  my  brooding  heart, 
Of  days  before  earth-miseries 

Became  of  me  a  part — 
Fair  days  that  fled,  and  hopes  so  dead 

They  hardly  stir  my  heart. 

The  iron  bars  and  walls  of  stone 

Woke  thoughts  I  dare  not  tell 
Of  how  a  soul  must  still  its  moan 

And  hide  it  in  a  cell — 

Woke     thoughts     that     crawled     and     writhed     and 
sprawled 

Like  phantom  things  of  hell. 


168  Prison  Problems 

All  showed  how  void  my  days  on  earth, 

How  fettered  by  my  fears, 
How  little  idle  hands  are  worth, 

How  weak  are  after-tears 
All  showed  how  vain  the  core  of  pain 

In  fruitless  wasted  years. 

My  eyes  looked  out!    the  harvest  throng 

Toiled  in  the  summer  sun ; 
I  heard  them  sing  a  thankful  song 

After  their  task  was  done. 
I  wondered  why  they  all  passed  by 

The  prison,  one  by  one. 


INDIFFERENCE. 

How  can  I  care  if  evils  loom 

Along  the  darkened  ways 
And  threaten  me  with  awful  doom 

Of  many  bitter  days? 

What  matter  if  the  future  state 

Be  one  of  ceaseless  pain? 
My  heart  is  steeled  for  any  fate, 

My  soul  cannot  complain. 

Have  I  not  lived  and  borne  the  life 

Of  life  with  other  men? 
Endured  amidst  their  foolish  strife, 

And,  striving,  laughed  at  them? 

Have  I  not  watched  and  mourned  beside 

The  spirit  of  my  youth? 
It  died,  betrayed,  bereft  of  pride, 

Ashamed  of  earth's  untruth. 


Prison    Problems  169 


What  matter  if  the  future  state 
Be  one  of  ceaseless  pain? 

This  life  makes  welcome  any  fate — 
Except  this  life  again. 


BUDDING  DAYS. 

Where  the  poet  worth  the  singing 

Who  has  never  made  a  lay 
To  the  early  bluebird's  winging — 

"Feathered  harbingers  of  May?" 
If  he's  sent  no  words  a-wing 

Of  the  lilt  and  life  and  bubble 
In  the  days  of  gracious  Spring? 

Has  there  ever  lived  a  lover, 

Worthy  of  the  sacred  name, 
Who  did  not  see  skies  above  Her 

From  his  own  heart-throbs  aflame? 
Who  has  not  thrilled  with  the  passion 

That  the  south-warmed  breezes  bring, 
And,  in  his  own  stumbling  fashion, 

Tried  to  tell  her  "Love  is  Spring?" 

When  our  life  was  worth  our  living, 

When  the  day  was  filled  with  song, 
When  our  thoughts  were  kind,  forgiving, 

To  an  evil  or  a  wrong. 
When  we  had  fair  words  for  others, 

And  a  heart  for  everything, 
Was  it  not  when  we  were  brothers 

To  the  budding  days  of  Spring? 


170  Prison    Problems 

THE  CONVICT'S  WIFE. 

There  are  no  happy  children  in  the  home  of  Shard 

tonight, 
There  are  no  merry  voices  where  they  used  to 

sound  so  clear, 
Nor  shall  I  hear  a  tumult  and  a  rush  of  footsteps 

light 
To   tell   me   someone    comes    and   that    whoever 

comes  is  dear. 

The  mother  sits  beside  the  stove,  her  face  is  sorrow- 
gray, 

Her  eyes  are  strained  as  if  they  see  some  awful- 
ness  of  hell ; 
So  did  she  look  when  I  peeped  in,  and  then  I  stole 

away, 

My  heart  so  thick  with  pity  that  remembrance 
is  not  well. 

I  wonder  if  the  man  now  gone  to  prison  for  his 

crime 
Has   felt   one-half  the   woe   she   feels   who  only 

loved  in  vain, 

I  wonder  if  he  sits  and  stares,  unmindful  of  the  time, 
His  form  without  all  calm  and  cold,  but  lashed 

within  by  pain. 
I  wonder  if  he  ever  thinks  how  she  who  bears  his 

name 
Must  bear  the  burden  of  the  deed  her  love  could 

not  control ; 
His   hands   alone   have   done   the   wrong,   and    his 

should  be  the  shame ; 

Yet  she,  the  wife  who  has  not  sinned,  sees  shame 
upon  her  soul. 


Prison    Problems  171 

Oh,  who  can  tell  the  measure  of  the  sin  that  men 

may  do 
When  judgment  strikes  the  lightest  on  the  one 

who  is  a  beast? 
How  can  we  think  the  laws  of  men  are  wise  and 

good  and  true 
While  they  who  suffer  most  are  those  whose  sins 

are  of  the  least? 

It  is  a  lie  that  innocence  fears  not  the  light  of  day, 
That  sweetest  dreams  are  for  the  one  who  has 

the  laws  obeyed ; 
This  woman  when   she   walks   abroad  will   shrink 

upon  the  way 

And  what  may  come  to  her  in  dreams  will  make 
her  more  afraid. 

They've  taken  him  to  prison,  but  she  has  no  place 

to  go— 

A  grave  alone  could  hide  and  hold  the  fearsome- 
ness  I  saw; 
O   wide   strange   eyes   and    tight-clenched    hands ! 

hands  clean  and  white  as  snow, 
Tight-clenched  on   thorned   eternity,   condemned 

by  life  and  law. 
The  prison  doors  are  high  and  wide,  and  farther  in 

is  gloom, 
And  men  go  by  these  iron  doors  to  rest  within 

the   shade ; 
His  sin  is  taken  to  a  place  where  it  may  find  a 

tomb — 

Her  heart  must  bear  the  shadow — and  the  Thing 
will  not  be  laid. 


172  Prison    Problems 


THE  MOURNERS. 

Hush  a  little  while  your  tears  and  wailing! 

'Tis  wrong  to  weep  because  your  babe  has  died ; 
Tears,  the  mother  tears,  are  unavailing — 

As  vain  as  mother  love,  or  dreams  or  pride. 

Foolish  one !  To  mourn  that  death  has  claimed  him  ! 

You  should  rejoice  and  sing  aloud  instead; 
Sing,  because  your  thoughts  have  never  blamed  him, 

Nor  almost  cursed  his  birth  nor  wished  him  dead. 

You  shall  never  turn,  with  mother  yearning, 
And  meet  a  strange  and  cold  untrustful  gaze; 

Come  to  him,  with  mother  kindness  burning, 
To  be  repulsed  by  chilly,  sullen  ways. 

Never  shall  your  heart,  tormented,  flutter 
Because  he  lives  and  still  his  love  you  lack; 

Never  shall  you  kneel  and  madly  mutter 
A  plea  to  God — to  bring  the  living  back. 

Oh,  the  joy  the  future  years  shall  bring  you 
When  you  shall  muse  of  him — forever  fair! 

Sweet  and  fair — and  not  a  thought  to  sting  you, 
Nor  burn  your  soul  with  anguish  or  despair! 

God,  oh  God!     If  mine — when  young  and  tender — 
Had  slipped  away  to  follow  voiceless  death, 

Memories  of  him  had  thrilled  with  splendor, 
And  throbbed  with  song  at  fancy's  softest  breath. 


Prison    Problems  173 

THE  PEISON  WALL. 

A  spirit  breathes  in  what  we  build, 

A  presence  haunts  the  deed, 
No  matter  if  the  thing  we  willed 

Be  charity  or  greed. 
Or  work  for  good  or  work  for  sin, 

Or  work  of  simple  fun, 
A  spirit  smiles  or  scowls  within 

The  thing  that  we  have  done. 

As  if  some  sullen  shape  of  hate, 

Gigantic,  tried  to  hew 
A  record  of  his  awful  fate 

So  men  may  know  it,  too, 
So  seems  the  wall  of  gloomy  stone, 

A  mightiness  brought  low, 
A  cursed  thing  that  stands  alone 

To  mock  me  and  my  woe. 

Almost  it  seems  to  have  a  face 

Of  masked  but  leering  scorn 
When  I  look  forth  and  try  to  trace 

Life's  glory  in  a  morn ; 
It  scowls  when  in  the  noonday  sun 

Its  face  is  swept  by  light, 
And  when  I  rest,  my  labor  done, 

It  threatens  in  the  night. 

My  heart  is  not  complaining — no; 

I   only  wonder  why 
A  wall  should  mount  to  heaven  so 

And  blot  fair  earth  and  sky ; 


174  Prison    Problems 

And  wonder  if  its  heartless  scheme 
Was  in  the  maker's  plan 

When  into  mud  He  wove  a  dream 
And  called  the  union  man. 


TODAY  IS  BEST  OF  ALL. 

When  winter  came  with  storm-cursed  days, 

With  biting  winds  and  snow, 
Did  you  not  wish  to  tread  the  ways 

Where  nodding  daisies  grow? 
Did  you  not  long  to  see  again 

The  lightning's  zigzagged  flash, 
And  hear  the  pelting  of  the  rain 

Go  pitty-pat  and  splash? 

Did  you  not  wish,  the  same  as  I, 

For  things  you  may  not  hold, 
Young  love  or  aged,  or  hours  that  fly, 

Or  fading  hope,  or  gold? 
Or  stared  into  the  vanished  years 

Where  priceless  things  are  lost 
And  wondered  through  a  mist  of  tears 

If  God  knows  what  they  cost? 

But  summers  pass,  and  friends  and  gold 

And  loves  and  hopes  depart 
However  much  we  strive  to  hold 

Their  dearness  to  the  heart; 
And  so  we  learn,  the  learning  few, 

That,  though  the  heavens  fall, 
Or  Fate  betray  or  Time  undo, 

Today  is  best  of  all. 


Prison    Problems  175 


A  WOKD  OF  EXPLANATION. 

The  penitentiary  at  Stillwater,  Minnesota,  is 
looked  upon  as  being  one  of  the  advanced  penal  in- 
stitutions where  the  criminal  class  in  the  great 
school  of  life  is  being  taught.  We  present  here  ex- 
hibit "B"  in  the  form  of  poetry,  prose  and  pleas 
that  reveal  the  soul  of  that  institution. 

These  pages,  from  176  to  194  inclusive,  reveal 
the  hopes  and  longings  of  the  average  man  in  that 
monstrous  cage.  This  was  written  by  one  who 
signs  his  name :  A.  N.  Apache,  and  is  reproduced 
here  for  the  reason  that  we  believe  it  better  to  study 
the  many  sides  of  a  type  than  it  would  be  to  have 
a  mere  look  at  one  angle  of  many  individuals. 

Much  of  this  was  written  by  Apache  for  publica- 
tion in  The  Mirror,  the  newsy,  breezy,  well  edited 
weekly  newspaper,  issued  by  the  inmates  of  that 
state  institution.  Some  of  these  verses  have  had  a 
rather  wide  circulation,  and  we  hope  to  extend  their 
usefulness. 

These  papers  are  fair  samples  of  what  the  pris- 
oners prepare  and  read  at  their  weekly  chautauqua 
meetings. 

Some  of  these  selections  admirably  lend  them- 
selves to  the  use  of  the  lyceum  and  chautauqua 
reader,  and  a  hint  to  the  wise  is  sufficient. 


176  Prison    Problems 


THE    "CHAUTAUQUA    CIRCLE"    AT 
STILLWATER. 

One  of  the  greatest  educational  features  of  the 
Minnesota  State  Prison  is  the  little  "Pierian  Circle" 
of  chautauqua  work  which  has  been  successfully 
maintained  for  over  twenty-five  (25)  years.  I  be- 
lieve the  circle  was  organized  under  Warden  Ran- 
dall and  favored  and  encouraged  by  each  succeeding 
warden  until  its  influence  has  been  felt  even  among 
the  members  of  the  chautauqua  movement  all  over 
the  United  States.  There  has  always  been  the  most 
intense  interest  manifested  by  its  members  and  the 
papers  read  and  discussed  at  its  meetings  every  two 
weeks  are  as  full  of  vital  force  to  the  every  day  life, 
and  as  brilliant  and  full  of  genius  and  depth  of 
thought  as  any  circle  of  the  kind  can  show.  Many 
able  writers  of  toda'y  who  are  filling  positions  of 
clerical  work  with  credit  to  themselves  and  their 
employers  began  their  career  in  the  M.  S.  P.  chau- 
tauqua. And  it  is  a  noticeable  fact  that  its  members 
stand  at  the  head  of  the  Prison  Roll  of  Honor  and 
deportment.  The  membership  averages  generally 
from  20  to  35  members  and  ought  to  be  far  larger, 
but  the  interest  never  flags,  and  has  run  its  meet- 
ings through  hot  summer  months  with  as  much  in- 
terest manifested  as  in  the  winter  and  early  spring 
and  fall.  The  little  circle  was  the  first  of  its  kind 
in  the  United  States  and  at  once  became  a  member 
of  the  great  chautauqua  movement  taking  up  its 
regular  course  of  studies,  and  using  the  same  text 
books.  It  was  from  the  membership  of  the  circle 
that  the  first  Prison  Paper  ("The  Mirror")  was 


Prison    Problems  17? 

founded,  and  which  has  become  such  an  important 
factor  in  the  reform  and  betterment  of  prison  life. 
And  its  twenty-five  years  of  successful  operation  is 
due  in  a  large  measure  to  the  talent  developed  from 
the  chautauqua  students,  while  its  entire  staff  of 
editors,  printers  and  contributors  are  with  but  few 
exceptions,  members  of  the  little  "Pierien"  circle. 
It  is  considered  a  very  high  honor  to  be  the  Presi- 
dent, Vice  President  or  Secretary  and  some  of  its 
annual  elections  develop  much  interest. 

Outside  of  certain  privileges  that  its  officers  en- 
joy in  the  prison,  there  is  a  certain  feeling  that  its 
officers  have  a  distinctive  standing  of  credit  among 
the  members  and  officers  of  the  Great  Chautauqua 
Movement.  One  of  the  most  intensely  interesting 
and  fascinating  records  that  has  ever  been  produced 
is  the  recorded  history  of  its  doings  by  its  many 
gifted  and  talented  secretaries  during  the  twenty- 
five  'years  and  over  of  its  existence. 


A  PLEA,  O  MINNESOTA. 

(The  editor  of  the  Thief  River  Falls  Times  gave 
the  "minor"  staff  an  excellent  "write-up"  recently, 
and  this  plea  was  inspired  by  the  editor's  closing 
lines:) 

"THEY  MEET  AGAIN,  TAKE  THEIR 
PLACE  IN  SOCIETY,  WELCOMED  AS  ONE 
WHO  HAS  BEEN  ABSENT  ON  A  JOURNEY." 

Fine  stuff  that,  prose  poetry.  It  has  been  clinging 
to  us  ever  since  it  was  written.  The  machine  in  the 


178  Prison    Problems 

shop  pounds  it  to  us:  YOU  ARE  ONLY  AWAY 
ON  A  JOURNEY. 

Good,  think  that  of  us  when  next  we  meet,  will 
you?  Ah,  there's  the  rub.  How  do  the  lines  ap- 
peal to  you,  O  Minnesota?  For  about  a  week  or 
more  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  grasped  each 
other's  hands  in  a  spirit  of  good  will.  Shylocks  for- 
got their  ten  per  cent  and  men  forgave  all  injury 
done  them.  The  cold  heart  found  joy  in  the  fact 
that  it  could  love  a  little,  and  the  ill-fed  factory  girl 
dried  her  eyes  and  claimed  it  a  good  world  after  all. 
A  wanderer  warmed  his  hopes  by  alien  fires,  he 
found  many  a  kindred  spirit  with  whom  he  could 
speak,  heart  to  heart,  and  with  the  full  assurance  of 
sympathy,  without  being  misunderstood. 

Hester  Prynne  trod  the  city  streets,  caught  the 
laughter  and  gladness  of  all  that  makes  life  fair  and 
she  forgot — forgot  the  Scarlet  Letter.  And  why? 
All  because  a  little  Babe  was  born  in  a  barn  over 
nineteen  hundred  years  ago. 

From  platform  and  pulpit  the  gospel  of  His  Divin- 
ity was  launched  forth  to  men.  We  were  told  of  His 
being  born  to  save  a  blundering  world ;  were  told 
that  His  love  was  ceaseless,  that  He  was  a  Man  of 
Sorrow.  Told  to  forget  our  own  pain,  and  to  medi- 
tate more  on  the  pain  of  others.  He  was  a  man  that 
suffered  pain.  We  were  carried  out  of  ourselves, 
beyond  our  existence  by  the  new  significance  put 
into  the  words,  "For  unto  you  is  born  this  day,  in 
the  city  of  David,  A  Saviour!" 

We  have  been  thrilled  with  the  intensity  of  their 
meaning;  thrilled  so  that  we  were  forced  to  grope 
back  over  our  yesterdays  and  acknowledge  to  our- 
selves, we  had  been  living  a  lie. 


Prison    Problems  179 

We  have  been  overwhelmed  with  His  sublimity 
and  majesty;  His  brightness  has  shone  forth  in 
flashes  of  lightning  and  it  was  impossible  for  us  not 
to  have  recognized  some  higher  glory.  Now  we 
have  a  question  to  ask  you,  Minnesota,  a  plea  to  put 
before  you.  Is  the  atmosphere  still  laden  with  glad- 
ness? Does  He  stand  for  your  idea  of  an  ideal  man? 
Does  His  creed  of  universal  love  mean  anything  to 
you  today?  We  would  like  to  know,  for  our  new 
law  proclaims  a  chance  for  each  of  us,  and  it  will 
send  us  out  to  mingle  with  you. 

Are  you  your  brother's  keeper?  We  will  not 
ask  much  of  you.  We  will  not  infringe  on  your 
higher  duties. 

All  we  ask  is  this :  don't  whip  us  with  the  "has 
been"  lash.  Take  us  for  what  we  will  try  to  be, 
not  for  what  we  have  been.  Don't  remind  us  of 
what  we  have  lived,  boost  us  for  what  we  are  go- 
ing to  live.  Don't  harp  about  our  past,  paint  to 
us  rather  a  glowing  picture  of  our  future.  We  are 
children,  gone  astray,  wa'yward  and  erring.  We 
felt  the  thrill  of  the  Christ  day,  deep  down  in  our 
hearts.  We  want  to  profit  by  the  story  of  Him  who 
lived  and  died  to  save  such  as  we. 

How  is  it  with  you  today?  Has  the  customafy 
gloom  settled  over  your  towns  and  cities?  Are  the 
streets  lonely?  Are  you  cold  and  self-centered? 
Are  you  careless  and  indifferent  to  all  beauty?  Have 
you  so  soon,  lost  the  influence  that  emanated  from 
His  birthday?  Do  you  govern  yourself  by  the  law, 
"Love  ye  one  another?" 

We  want  to  know,  for  by  these  things  we  can 
judge  you,  and  by  the  same  you  will  judge  us. 
There  is  always  room  for  progress  towards  our 


180  Prison    Problems 

ideals,  no  matter  what  our  conditions  or  environ- 
ments may  be,  and  if  you  see  the  glorified  humanity 
of  Christ  in  the  right  light,  then  we,  with  our  fail- 
ures, may  still  look  to  you  for  encouragement  in 
our  "building  up"  efforts.  We  know  what  life  has 
to  offer  in  the  way  of  misery,  if  we  are  scorned  by 
you  we  may  once  more  find  ourselves  on  the  edge 
of  things  where  a  flutter  sways  the  balance.  If  you 
tell  us  that  our  recommendation,  with  its  term  of 
imprisonment,  is  not  the  best  of  references,  then, 
we  may  cry  out  against  the  cruelty  of  society,  cry 
out  in  the  loneliness  of  a  city  supposed  to  contain 
human  souls.  We  have  been  wanderers  yet  we  have 
preserved  some  of  our  manhood.  Don't  sever  the 
link  that  binds  us  to  you ;  don't  mock  us  in  our 
misery;  don't  see  humor  in  our  damnation.  There 
is  in  all  of  us  a  height,  or  depth,  it  depends  on  how 
the  chords  are  touched.  Christmas  day  was  an  ap- 
peal to  you  and  to  us,  the  something  it  stands  for 
met  a  something  in  you,  and  in  us.  It  will  be  earth's 
greatest  triumph  if  you  can,  and  will  lift  us  up  to 
your  heights,  especially  if  your  chords  are  attuned 
with  His  divine  strains.  He  who  was  born  in  a 
manger. 

We  have  stopped  gazing  backward;  we  have 
shifted  our  point  of  view,  and  we  look  to  you,  O 
Minnesota,  for  the  word  of  encouragement  and 
cheer.  We  will  not  believe  that  we  are  lost,  for  the 
book  with  its  wonderful  love,  tells  us  that  a  man 
cried  out  from  his  cross :  "Lord,  remember  one  when 
Thou  comest  into  Thy  kingdom."  Yes,  even  the 
thief  on  the  cross  had  a  new  birth.  We  will  leave 
here  full  of  hope,  but  class  pride  can  and  may  play 
havoc  with  our  hope.  "It's  up  to  us,"  you  tell  us, 


Prison    Problems  181 

but  isn't  it  just  a  wee  bit  up  to  you?  Shall  we  get 
the  lift  or  the  shove,  the  boost  or  the  knock?  Shall 
slander  drive  us  away  from  the  town  wherein  we 
dreamed  our  beautiful  dreams,  from  the  place  where 
we  forgot,  and  fell ;  where  we  lost  in  a  mad  moment, 
our  manhood ;  where  we  forfeited  our  right  to  live 
and  mingle  with  our  kind?  Or  shall  it  be  as  a  wel- 
come, to  one,  "Who  only  went  away  on  a  journey?" 


THE  GREAT  BLACK  WAY. 

THE  GREAT  WHITE  WAY,  it  is  called,  and 
yet  I  know  at  least  three  persons  who  can  bestow 
on  it  a  better  fitted  name. 

THE  BOY  who  was  unafraid  after  spending  a  few 
short  weeks  on  it,  gave  it  a  different  name.  THE 
LITTLE  COUNTRY  GIRL  who  dared  live  on  it 
but  a  short  time,  called  it  by  another  name.  WHILE 
I,  even  I,  who  know  it  well,  damn  it  and  call  it,  the 
GREAT  BLACK  WAY. 

The  great  lighted  way  is  to  me  a  picture  of  dark- 
est night.  I  see  a  great  part  of  all  the  broken  faiths 
of  humanity  piled  here  in  reckless  abandon.  The 
gay  throng  wears  a  mask  and  the  merry  peals  of 
laughter  are  but  artificial  covering  for  hearts  that 
sob.  All  of  the  faces  lie.  Read  them  through  the 
mask  and  they  express  all  the  emotions  of  the  hu- 
man soul. 

The  momentous  victories  cannot  efface  the  pain 
and  the  sorrow  and  the  defeat,  defeat  of  worthy 
ambition  that  was  mired  on  the  street  of  broken 
souls. 

THE  BOY,  who  was  unafraid,  entered  the  Great 


182  Prison    Problems 

Black  Way  with  quick,  eager  step,  with  a  freedom 
that  bespoke  the  undefeated  soul,  free  from  the 
blights  of  disillusion  and  discord.  But  after  a  few 
months  the  Boy,  who  was  unafraid,  had  seen  it  all, 
and  then  he  grew  afraid,  afraid  of  the  day.  He  came, 
he  saw,  and  he  was  conquered.  The  juggernaut  of 
the  Black  Wa'y  passed  over  him,  and  crushed  out 
all  the  fellowship.  Now  he  is  a  broken  husk,  un- 
lovable and  impossible,  yet  with  no  outward,  de- 
jected mien.  The  head  is  not  bowed  in  helpless- 
ness; he  laughs,  and  sighs  and  watches  for  the  other 
fellow  who  is  seeing  the  bright  lights  for  the  first 
time.  But  behind  the  mask  is  a  c'ynic  whom  the 
street  has  bandoned  and  now  but  tolerates. 

THE  GIRL  who  dared,  made  a  shrine  of  the 
Great  Black  Way.  It  was  a  golden  way  with  its 
days  of  enchantment  and  flower  decked  joys.  She 
laid  her  fresh,  young  soul  down  before  the  shrine. 
Then  came  the  juggernaut.  Its  wheels  are  not 
padded,  as  the  girl  will  know  who  places  her  faith 
on  the  street  of  Broken  Hopes.  Now  for  the  GIRL 
who  dared,  the  pink  and  white  of  the  way  looks 
stale  and  void  of  all  coloring.  Bitter,  defeated  and 
broken  on  life's  road  she  passes  on,  and  her  laugh 
rings  out  in  the  merry  madness  and  some  times  she 
sings,  but  she  wears  a  mask  for  in  the  laughter 
and  song  is  a  false  note,  brought  there  because  of 
the  fear  that  some  one  will  open  the  toll-gates  of 
memory  some  day  and  she  will  grow  afraid. 

Oh !  you  poor,  life-wrecked  GIRL  who  dared,  and 
BOY  who  was  unafraid,  I  pity  you,  for  I  recall  on 
my  blue  days  and  on  days  of  gloom,  the  tempta- 
tions and  pitfalls  to  be  found  in  that  venturesome 
and  wandering  life  along  The  Great  Black  Way. 


Prison    Problems 


MICKEY. 

Yesterday  he  died,  a  wee  bit  of  a  lad  hardly  six- 
teen, just  in  the  golden  noon  of  his  boyhood,  and 
he  died  a  convict,  and  now  sleeps  in  a  convict's 
grave.  I  do  not  know  much  about  the  lad,  but  what 
I  saw  of  him  attracted  me.  He  was  one  of  those 
quiet,  unassuming  chaps  with  a  not  unattractive 
habit  of  minding  his  own  business  while  his  smile 
was  a  sad,  forlorn  one,  seen  more  often  in  a  frail 
girl  battling  for  health,  rather  than  in  a  convict. 

We  wonder  if  heart-ache  did  not  help  to  bring 
about  his  end,  for  he  knew  the  sadness  of  a  bleeding 
heart  before  his  time.  Many  a  hard  thought  must 
have  found  harbor  in  his  breast,  for  through  a  mist 
of  tears,  he  saw  himself  an  exile  from  all  the  joys 
of  fair  boyhood,  cast  among  the  sternest  realities  of 
life,  that  might  have  been  turned  into  the  never 
can  be.  I  would  like  to  bring  before  all  mothers, 
the  lonely  grave  where  our  convict  boy  lies,  and 
to  bring  to  you  the  great  big  pity  of  it  all,  so  that 
you  may  awaken  to  the  fact  that  there  are  other 
boys  on  the  road  that  leads  to  this  prison. 

There  are  hosts  of  boys  who  do  not  belong  below 
the  dead-line.  We  do  not  want  them  to  come  here. 
What  are  you  doing  to  keep  them  from  meeting 
the  fate  of  the  boy  Mickey  who  has  just  died? 
There's  a  red  headed  boy  making  a  trip  in  the 
patrol  wagon  today,  and  tonight  in  a  dismal  cell,  he 
.will  cry  and  moan  all  night  long.  The  path  before 
that  boy  is  a  crooked  one,  as  crooked  as  the  check- 
ered careers  of  those  who  went  before  him. 

The  police  may  call  him  Mickey,  the  thief,  and 


184  Prison    Problems 

they  may  tell  you  he  is  a  hopeless  case,  but  it  is 
false.  Ask  Mickey  why  he  doesn't  behave  and  he 
will  answer:  "Nobody  gives  me  a  show,  they  are 
always  pinching  me,  they  think  I  do  everything." 

There's  many  a  Mickey  ends  here  because  he  was 
misunderstood.  Some  deed  is  committed  in  St.  Paul 
at  two  o'clock.  Mickey  did  it!  At  ten  minutes 
after  two  on  the  same  day,  some  wrong  is  done  in 
Minneapolis.  The  same  Mickey  did  it !  If  you  ask 
the  police  how  such  a  thing  could  be  done  by  Mickey 
with  the  distance  so  great  they  will  answer :  "The 
little  Devil  is  everywhere."  Once  in  a  while  some 
woman  goes  to  the  police  station  to  comfort  Mickey 
and  she  gives  him  a  tiact,  then  returns  home  with 
the  consciousness  of  a  -luty  well  performed. 

One  does  not  know  that  the  tract  is  on  the  "Evils 
of  Dancing."  Mickey  does  not  read  it,  for  it's  some- 
thing else  Mickey  wants.  He  wants  some  one  to 
press  him  close,  some  one  to  love  him.  Perhaps 
you  had  a  boy  in  the  long  ago,  just  the  age  of  our 
boy  and  when  he  went  out  of  your  life,  he  left  it 
very  empty  indeed.  You  moaned  over  his  grave, 
and  in  after  years  you  knew  your  life  was  incom- 
plete. I  want  to  bring  up  to  you  that  lamplight  of 
long  ago.  I  want  you  to  creep  back  into  that  hal- 
lowed past  so  that  in  your  great  sorrow  you  might 
think  of  the  sorrows  of  the  many  neglected  Mickeys 
on  the  dead-line  of  your  town  today.  Your  boy  may 
not  have  committed  sin  is  that  Mickey  is  sinning,  but 
they  both  dreamed  the  same  dreams. 

Your  boy  had  a  bright  future  before  him.  Mickey 
has  but  a  sorrowful  destiny.  I  would  that  I  could 
bring  the  tragedy  of  Mickey's  life  to  you;  lay  open 
the  little  heart  and  show  to  you  a  thing  bruised  by 


Prison    Problems  185 

pain  and  agony,  like  as  to  a  whip-lash  on  a  naked 
soul. 

There's  many  a  home  today  where  a  mother  still 
weeps  for  her  son  who  died.  Why  not  let  some 
wandering  Mickey  have  his  place  in  your  heart. 
Don't  you  think  the  boy  up  in  Heaven  would  be  glad 
to  know  you  are  making  some  heart  glad  "in  his 
name  and  for  his  memory?"  Let  the  mother  in  you 
be  ever  in  a  receiving  mood  and  we  will  not  have 
any  boys  dying  in  our  prisons.  I  would  like  for  you 
to  creep  into  a  bedroom  tonight  and  gather  together 
all  the  things  your  boy  once  wore.  The  sight  of 
them  may  open  the  old  wound ;  may  pull  upon  your 
heart-strings  so  hard  that  you  will  go  out  into  the 
highways  and  find  some  Mickey.  You  can  put 
aside  all  legislation  and  administration  by  a  heart 
throb.  You  can  put  to  shame  all  machine  made 
charity  by  opening  your  heart  to  Mickey,  only  love 
will  win  him.  Tracts  will  never,  never  do  it.  Tracts 
came  from  a  machine;  love  came  from  God.  Some 
day  we  will  awaken.  We  have  been  sleeping  long. 
We  will  get  untangled  from  the  worldly  web  of 
false  idealism,  and  then  Mickey  will  come  into  his 
own.  Some  day  when  he  stands  up  to  receive 
sentence  from  a  court  there  will  be  bands  of  white 
souled  women  begging  for  the  chance  to  take  him 
to  their  homes  and  we  will  bury  no  more  children 
in  a  convict's  grave. 

This  article  has  little  to  do  with  the  manner  in 
which  Mickey  offended  the  dignity  of  a  great  and 
powerful  state.  Only  this,  an  outraged  people  sent 
the  little  boy  to  the  great  white  prison  to  spend  his 
life  and  in  so  doing  threw  up  their  hands  saying 
"We  cannot  rectify  the  Great  Cause  so  must  put 


186  Prison    Problems 

all  our  energy  into  condemning  the  sequence." 
"Little  boys"  are  not  for  prisons  any  more  than  the 
red-breasted  robin  is  for  a  cage,  and  as  the  robin 
beats  out  its  short  life  against  its  prison  bars,  so  the 
little  boy  wearied  of  the  whitened  walls  and  long- 
ing for  the  open,  as  little  boys  will,  beat  his  soul 
against  the  grated  door.  Thus  the  time  came  when 
he  lay  upon  his  narrow  cot,  while  far  away  the 
church  bells  echoed  over  the  hills  and  the  last  rays 
of  the  setting  sun  fell  across  the  floor,  crept  up  and 
rested  for  a  moment  on  the  head  of  the  little  boy 
who  bartered,  in  a  mad  moment,  his  birthright. 
Above  his  head  hung  his  striped  coat,  his  badge  of 
dishonor.  A  nurse  in  grey  knelt  beside  the  cot  and 
moistened  the  little  fevered  lips  with  lumps  of  ice. 
A  long-time-sentence  man,  but  with  a  heart,  mum- 
bled from  the  book  of  common  prayer,  while  afar  off 
in  the  city  a  heart-broken  mother  sobbed  out  her 
sorrow,  knowing  that  her  boy  was  near  to  death. 
And  there  in  the  evening  glow,  with  the  sun  sinking 
down  in  the  west  and  the  bells  faintly  calling  away 
off  yonder  on  the  hillside,  the  little  boy  convict 
clutched  his  crucifix,  heaved  a  gentle  sigh  and  died. 
He  had  served  his  life  sentence. 

The  tuning  up  of  a  violin  is  not  sweet  music,  but 
if  you  listen  carefully  you  will  hear  sweet  strains  at 
last.  Mickey  may  not  be  an  angel  but  if  you  care 
to  try,  you  will  surely  find  much  hidden  sweetness. 
Remember  our  boy  who  died,  and  that  one  time 
from  the  burning  sands  of  Galilee  came  a  great 
eternal 

"Love  ye  one  another." 


Prison    Problems  187 


WITH  CLOSED  EYES. 

I  closed  my  e'yes  at  noon-day  and  looked  out  upon 
the  world.  I  saw  the  torch  of  liberty,  and  free- 
dom's flag,  unfurled.  And  as  I  gazed,  I  saw  strange 
things  which  brought  this  thought  to  me,  Which 
of  the  twain  are  crucified,  the  bond  slave,  or  the 
free?  I  saw  a  mill  belch  forth  its  flame  amid  its  din 
and  noise.  I  saw  machines  fed  by  the  hands  of  little 
girls  and  boys.  I  saw  them  crushed  by  cruel  hours, 
by  routine  and  by  rule,  which  made  of  "God's  Sinai 
Law"  a  source  of  ridicule.  I  saw  young  girls,  with 
tired  eyes,  ill-fed  and  scantily  clad,  in  desperation 
leave  the  mill,  to  mingle  with  the  bad.  No  hand 
held  out  to  succor,  ignored  through  mighty  pride, 
they  go  down  to  their  shamed  defeat,  and  Christ's 
re-crucified.  I  saw  the  factory  crosses,  borne  'til 
life  is  done,  and  on  each  cross  I  saw  hung  up  the 
bleeding  form  of  one,  who  left  a  country  farm-house, 
a  hopeful  country  maid;  lured  by  flaring  advertise- 
ments that  promised,  then  betrayed.  I  saw  society 
calmly  look  with  an  unseeing  eye  while  men  went 
boldly  through  the  land  to  shame  and  crucify.  I  saw 
men  crushed  by  labor's  wheel ;  young  bodies  marred 
and  slain ;  some  bore  the  look,  O  God,  of  Christ ! 
Who  bears  the  brand  of  Cain? 

I  saw  the  old-faced,  little  girls  in  tenements,  ob- 
scure, I  heard  the  mournful  cry  of  them,  born  but 
to  endure.  No  time  for  rest,  for  play,  for  prayer. 
A  life  of  toil,  no  ease,  dividends  must  be  piled  up  by 
even  "The  Least  of  These."  With  toil  their  life 
blood  given  to  quench  King  Mammon's  thirst.  I 
saw  girls  totter  'neath  their  load,  by  brutal  drivers 


188  Prison    Problems 

cursed.  I  looked  upon  their  helplessness  and  heard 
their  bitter  cry  to  a  blind  world,  to  wake  and  probe, 
love  and  rectify.  And  there  I  saw  a  mill-death,  no 
hearse,  no  funeral  grand.  The  "potter's  field,"  six 
feet  of  earth,  a  barren  unkept  land,  and  then  I 
thought  of  the  Christ  creed :  Sisters  all,  and  Broth- 
er, no  matter  what  your  station,  Thou  shalt  love 
one  another.  We  look  too  high  and  care  too  much 
for  blue  blood  and  its  birth.  Let's  get  a  little  closer 
to  the  "white  slaves"  of  this  earth.  They  cry  aloud 
for  help  from  us,  cry  sorely  in  their  heed.  Show 
them  that  Christ  still  lives  in  you,  show  them  your 
faith,  your  creed.  "Wanted — a  Man"  the  cry  rings 
out  to  you  by  tongue  and  pen.  "Wanted — a  thou- 
sand Women"  also  "A  thousand  men"  inspired  by 
love  and  virtue  who  see  their  duty  is  to  save  the 
little  tot  from  a  master  that  drives  it  as  a  slave,  that 
children  may  have  some  time  for  play  between  the 
cradle  and  the  grave. 


A    TRIBUTE. 

Scum  of  scum  they  called  him,  offspring  of  out- 
cast and  squaw,  gambler,  loafer,  thief,  men  sitting 
before  the  night-fire  spoke  in  whispers  of  the  deeds 
he  had  done,  of  the  food  and  clothing  he  gained  by 
right  of  courage.  Yet  it  was  also  told  of  him  that 
he  had  one  virtue  in  all  of  his  wild,  mad  career,  he 
had  never  wronged  or  insulted  a  woman.  Men  call 
him  outcast,  but  I  feel  that  over  the  "great  divide," 
angels  will  take  his  one  virtue  into  consideration 
when  fixing  his  punishment,  for  virtue  of  any  kind 
will  not,  and  cannot  go  unrewarded. 


Prison    Problems  189 

•f 

THE  MAN  IN  THE  STRIPES. 
(With  apologies  to   Edwin  Markham.) 

Bowed  by  the  might  of  prison  toil,  he  leans 

'Gainst  his  cell  door  and  gazes  at  the  stars, 

The  emptiness  of  life,  shows  in  his  face, 

And  on  his  back  a  suit  of  prison  stripes. 

Rapture  is  not  for  him,  grim  despair 

Clings  to  him  throughout  the  dismal  years, 

A  thing  that  grieves,  but  ever,  always  hopes 

That  in  the  future,  on  some  distant  day, 

He'll  mingle  with  his  fellowmen  once  more 

And  breathe  the  air  of  freedom  and  of  God. 

Is  this  the  babe  some  mother  suffered  for, 

Shook  hands  with  Death  to  bring  this  life  to  birth? 

Far  better  had  he  in  his  cradle  died 

Than  live  a  victim  of  a  penal  plan. 

Loves  he  the  hand  that  put  him  where  he  is? 

Does  reformation's  law  appeal  to  him? 

When    he    steps   through   those    ponderous   prison 

gates, 

Who  is  the  one  to  guide  his  feet  aright? 
Society  wants  none  of  him,  he's  only  prey 
To  all  man  hunters  and  for  all  the  years. 
Lonely  he  must  ever  stumble  on 
In  alien  ways,  until  he  falls  again, 
Blundering,  blindly  through  the  dusk  of  years 
Unsatisfied,  forgotten  and  unwept. 
O,  lawyers,  judges  and  grim  jurymen, 
How  will  you  rate  upon  a  final  day? 
Can  you  look  straight  into  Eternal  Eyes, 
Speak  truth  before  the  Auditor  above? 


190  Prison    Problems 

How  will  you  answer  for  your  thoughtlessness? 
For  in  the  balance  many  men  you've  weighed. 
How  will  you  weigh  in  that  grand  balance,  when 
Upon  the  scales  depend  Eternity? 


CHEER  UP. 

Be  a  booster  and  a  smiler,  yes,  you  can 
Tell,  and  prove  there  is  a  brotherhood  of  man; 
Brag  about  the  sun  a-shining, 
'Bout  dark  clouds  with  silver  lining, 
And  on  worry,  fret  and  pining 
Place  a  ban. 

On  the  brightness  of  tomorrow  lay  your  bet. 
Never  soul  has  ever  lost  it,  not  as  yet. 
If  you  do  not  trouble  borrow, 
You  can  claim  that  your  tomorrow 
Will  not  hold  a  bit  of  sorrow 
Not  a  fret. 

Preach  aloud  the  creed  of  sunshine,  good  and  true, 
Take  your  brightness  from  the  heavens,  deep  and 

blue. 

Go  your  way  and  sing  a  song 
And  you'll  see  as  you  go  long 
Folks  will  pause  out  in  the  throng 
To  smile  at  you. 

When  you  see  a  brother  down,  a  broken  thing, 
Say  a  word  to  comfort  him  and  ease  the  sting. 
Get  to  doing  every  day 


Prison    Problems  191 


Some  good  deed  along  the  way 
So  the  world  may  rise  and  say 
Love  is  King. 


XMAS  MUSINGS. 

Somewhere  tonight  some  heart  is  made  the  lighter, 
Somewhere  a  word  of  cheer  instead  of  blame, 
Somewhere  a  soul  is  now  a  bit  more  whiter 
Because  of  something  said,  done  in  His  Name. 
Somewhere  a  girlie,  sinned  'gainst  more  than  sin- 
ning 

Creeps  up  to  see  the  Baby  in  the  straw, 
Somewhere,  tonight,  a  new  life  is  beginning 
Because  of  Him    (not  brought  about  b'y  law). 
Somewhere,  tonight,   a  mother's  tears  are   falling. 
Somewhere  an  Ishmael  kneels,  and  then  a  blur 
He  sends  His  voice,  outward,  upward,  calling 
To  God  for  help  and  strength,  because  of  Her, 
Somewhere    She    kneels,    Ah,    who    can    unite    the 

Glory? 

Bent  with  the  toil  of  years,  long  used  to  prayer, 
She  sends  aloft  the  oft  repeated  story, 
Asks  God  to  watch  o'er  him,  out  there,  somewhere. 


MY  WISH. 

Some  day   I  must  take  thirty  from  the  hook; 

When  that  times  comes,  I  pray  you  all,  forget 

The  time  I  was  an  outcast;  lived  a  crook; 

For  on  that  day  I  pray  that  you  may  let 

Me  lie  in  some  charmed   spot,  where  children  go 

To  play  and  romp  with  happy  laugh  and  song ; 


192  Prison    Problems 

I  think,  perhaps,  that  I  might  catch  the  glow, 
The  purity  that  I  had  missed,  so  long. 

Oh !  Do  not  lay  me  where  the  wild  winds  blow, 

I've  had  enough  of  wildness,  let  me  rest 

In  some  calm  spot  where  only  flowers  grow, 

And   have  some   little   maid,  place   on   my  breast, 

With  simple  prayer,  a  rose  of  purest  white. 

A  rose  of  white  because  by  Angels  kissed ; 

Ah !  Yes  when  I  have  bid  the  world,  good-night 

I'll  want  at  last  the  things  I've  always  missed. 


SUCCESS. 

I  do  not  know  the  end  of  all  my  planning, 
The  future  wears  a  veil,  I  cannot  see ; 
But  this  I  feel ;  the  Master  in  His  scanning 
Holds  out  some  Hope  for  me. 

I  do  not  know  what  lies  far  in  the  distance, 
I  am  content  to  watch  today,  and  wait! 
I  know  my  path,  the  one  of  least  resistance. 
For  I've  been  given  Faith. 

I  cannot  claim  all  world  joys  are  denied  me, 
I  have  one  boon  to  ask,  one  only  plea ; 
That  I  may  live  that  those  around  may  see 
I  claim  some  Charity. 

I  know  not  if  my  future  holds  more  sweetness, 
I  only  pray  the  watchful  One  above 
Will  strengthen  me,  so  I  may  win  completeness, 
Keep  warm  my  heart  with  love. 


Prison    Problems  193 


HOPE. 

Rudderless  like  a  derelict  at  sea 

I  rose  and  fell, 
I  drifted  and  moaned  in  my  misery 

My  path  a  hell. 

And  yet  a  truth  has  been  taught  to  me 
Came  into  my  red  torn  agony, 

And  all  is  well. 

Into  the  depths  you  stretched  forth  a  hand 

One  golden  day, 
And  I  who  had  scoffed  now  understand 

The  brighter  way, 

For  the  truth  in  your  eyes  I  cannot  forget, 
That  bids  me  put  by  all  care  and  all  fret 
And  kneel  to  pray. 

Today  I'm  praying  for  what  I've  done 

(In   good  cheer). 
Life  still  is  good  at  the  set  of  the  sun, 

You  taught  me,  dear, 
That  I  can  be  yet  what  I  want  to  be, 
Last  night  a  convict,  today,  I'm  free, 

The  goal  seems  near. 

You  drove  awa'y  all  hate  from  my  eyes 

No  trouble  I  borrow, 
I  shall  not  bring  you  a  bundle  of  lies 

To  cause  you  sorrow. 
Nothing  but  truth  and  sincerity 
Then  hand  in  hand,  dear,  you  and  me. 

Face  our  tomorrow. 


194  Prison    Problems 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  REPEATER. 

By.Rollo  H.  McBride. 

The  matter  of  handling  men  discharged  from 
prison  in  such  a  manner  that  they  will  not  return 
there  is  not  to  be  mastered  by  maudlin  sentiment.  It 
is  a  problem  in  economics.  If  the  powers  that  rule 
permitted  live  stock  to  be  treated  after  the  fashion, 
and  with  as  little  mental  direction,  as  convicts  are 
treated,  public  opinion  would  swiftly  make  itself 
felt  upon  the  subject.  After  a  somewhat  protracted 
study  of  the  subject,  and  carefully  striving  to  under- 
state rather  than  to  overstate,  I  am  justified  in  the 
assertion  that  fully  fifty  per  cent  of  the  men  and 
women  sentenced  to  imprisonment  for  trivial  of- 
fenses for  shorter  or  longer  terms  should  never  be 
locked  up  at  all.  I  am  not  arguing  the  case,  I  am 
merely  stating  the  fact.  Here  is  a  frightful  waste 
of  manhood  and  womanhood.  The  most  expensive 
blunder  of  the  city  of  Chicago  is  the  arresting  of 
seventy  thousand  persons  annually.  If  a  captain 
of  industry  were  to  conduct  a  trust  business  along 
such  extravagant  and  stupid  lines  for  the  period  of 
a  year  it  would  spell  bankruptcy  for  the  stockhold- 
ers. 

My  beliefs  were  not  born  of  books.  I  myself 
am  a  product  of  that  Underworld  of  which  the  news- 
paper men  make  "copy,"  and  the  preachers,  text. 
With  despair  in  my  heart,  and  the  suicide  urge  in 
my  brain,  I  have  tramped  the  desert  of  stone  and 
steel  called  Chicago,  and  knocked  at  the  doors  of 


Prison    Problems  195 

many  "missions."  Most  of  these  are  manned  by 
sincere  men  and  women  anxious  to  serve  in  all  good 
causes.  They  desire  to  help  the  unfortunate  and 
the  fallen,  and  they  do  help  them  in  ways  often  un- 
seen of  human  eye.  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should 
take  up  the  easy  pose  of  censor  of  any  of  these 
instruments  for  the  alleviation  of  human  misery. 
All,  all  in  their  manner  and  after  their  kind,  are 
helpful. 

But  what  is  it  a  discharged  prisoner  needs  when 
he  is  turned  out  of  the  Chicago  House  of  Correc- 
tion with  a  nickel  in  his  pocket?  If  he  is  friend- 
less, without  shoes,  without  clothes,  food  or  lodging, 
what  is  he  to  do?  Where  is  he  to  turn?  In  a  word, 
what  is  his  prime  need?  Clearly,  his  need  is  credit; 
credit,  the  life  force  of  modern  civilization.  No 
starving  man  can  be  normal  or  sane.  Picture  for 
a  moment,  if  you  please,  the  mental  attitude  toward 
the  world  of  the  discharged  convict  with  but  a  nickel 
in  his  pocket,  his  feet  sticking  out  of  his  shoes,  his 
clothes  dirty,  torn  and  frayed,  without  one  available 
friend  to  whom  to  apply,  without  food,  or  a  hole  to 
crawl  into  to  sleep,  with  the  brand  of  the  jail  upon 
him,  and  the  haunting  fear  that  he  may  not  be  able 
to  "make  good"  and  as  a  result  be  forced  back  to  the 
practices  that  lead  again  to  the  Bridewell.  Picture 
that  man's  outlook  upon  life.  If  you  who  read  these 
words  were  in  that  position,  would  you  wish  anyone 
to  pray  with  you,  or  exhort  you  to  be  "good,"  or 
invite  you  to  come  to  Jesus  and  be  "saved?"  I  have 
been  there.  I  have  had  well-meaning  persons  hand 
me  that  kind  of  thing  when  I  was  starving,  and  with 
a  "God  bless  you,  Brother."  turn  and  leave  me  help- 
less and  hopeless  in  my  desperate,  despairing  mis- 


196  Prison    Problems 

ery.  And  I  say,  with  all  courtesy,  and  with  every 
desire  to  avoid  giving  offence,  that  that  is  not  Chris- 
tianity. The  authentic  need,  then,  of  the  dis- 
charged prisoner  is  credit.  Credit  for  food,  credit 
for  clothes,  credit  for  lodging,  credit  with  some  em- 
ployer that  he  is  eager  and  willing  to  walk  straight, 
and  a  certification  to  that  effect  from  some  responsi- 
ble individual  in  the  community  who  is  willing  to 
take  a  chance  on  the  man. 

Given  these  credits  it  is  then  up  to  the  discharged 
prisoner  himself  to  make  good.  No  one  can  save 
his  brother's  soul  to  be  sure,  but  he  can  give  that 
brother  the  opportunity  to  help  save  himself.  When 
that  is  done  everything  is  done. 

In  November,  1909,  some  big  hearted  business 
men  of  Chicago  gave  me  the  funds  to  open  "The 
Parting  of  the  Ways  Home"  in  Twenty-second 
Street  at  its  junction  with  Clark  Street.  This  is  the 
centre  of  Chicago's  vice  district,  the  sordid  section 
with  the  sense  of  shame  unknown.  The  Home  was 
rounded  upon  the  basic  idea  that  if  a  man  is  worth 
saving  he  is  worth  treating  like  a  gentleman.  To 
treat  a  man  like  a  man  is  to  trust  him.  To  treat  him 
like  an  equal  is  not  to  preach  at  him  or  admonish 
him  to  be  this  or  that.  The  instant  you  begin  to 
preach  to  another  that  instant  you  arrogate  to  your- 
self a  superiority  of  virtue  that  quite  naturally 
arouses  antagonism  in  the  other  fellow's  mind.  An- 
other thing ;  if  you  tell  a  man  that  you  are  interested 
in  him,  and  will  not  back  the  statement  by  DOING 
something  for  him.  the  man  knows  instinctively  that 
you  do  not  mean  what  you  say.  The  person  who 
professes  an  interest  in  a  man's  soul  but  will  do  noth- 
ing for  his  body  is  a  first-class  humbug.  In  this 


Prison    Problems  197 

light  the  word  dis-interest  must  be  eliminated  from 
human  affairs.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  disinterest. 
To  deny  interest  is  to  deny  Christ,  to  deny  Life. 

"The  Parting  of  the  Ways  Home"  was  opened 
then  in  order  to  extend  to  the  down  and  out  chap  a 
new  credit  with  the  General  Interest,  with  Society. 
How  has  the  idea  worked  out  in  practice?  Admir- 
ably, in  all  ways.  I  dislike  statistics  and  do  not  wish 
to  inflict  them  upon  the  reader.  But  "The  Home" 
has  to  its  credit  the  taking  of  several  hundred  dis- 
charged prisoners  fresh  from  the  Bridewell  and  re- 
storing them  to  lives  of  usefulness  and  self-respect. 
In  the  first  two  years  we  received  1452  men  and  se- 
cured positions  for  1080.  In  each  case,  naturally,  in- 
dividual treatment  is  called  for.  I  never  preach  at 
the  boys  who  come  to  me.  And  I  do  not  permit 
other  people  to  preach  at  them,  either.  "The  Home" 
is  neither  a  "mission"  nor  a  church.  We  have  never 
permited  nor  shall  we  permit  "The  Home"  to  be 
turned  into  a  show  place  for  the  purpose  of  parad- 
ing the  boys  before  the  professional  philanthropists. 
The  boys  are  not  associating  with  us  for  the  pur- 
pose of  being  made  "good"  but  for  the  purpose  of 
being  made  good  for  something.  Mere  static  "good- 
ness" I  have  never  been  able  to  understand,  any- 
way. A  man  is  good  for  something  or  he  is  not. 
If  he  is  not  good  for  something,  I  fail  to  understand 
how  he  can  be  good  for  anything. 

The  man  who  did  more  than  any  other  in  aiding 
me  to  get  "The  Home"  under  way  was  the  Hon. 
McKenzie  Cleland.  When  Judge  Cleland  was  sit- 
ting in  the  Municipal  Court  at  the  Maxwell  Street 
Police  Station  he  became  deeply  interested  in  the 
conditions  of  the  men  who  appeared  before  him. 


198  Prison    Problems 

When  Judge  Cleland  was  on  the  bench  he  released 
on  probation  some  1,500  prisoners  upon  their  prom- 
ise to  reform.  Only  one  man  afterwards,  so  far  as 
learned,  broke  faith.  About  eight  per  cent  violated 
their  pledge  to  stop  drinking,  but  none  of  them  com- 
mitted crime.  Judge  Cleland  is  the  father  of  adult 
probation  in  Chicago.  He  is  one  with  me  in  the 
belief  that  fifty  per  cent  of  the  men  com- 
mitted to  the  House  of  Correction  for  trivial  offenses 
should  never  be  sent  there  at  all. 

John  L.  Whitman,  the  Warden  of  the  House  of 
Correction,  is  the  authority  for  the  statement,  based 
on  the  figures,  that  since  the  starting  of  "The  Part- 
ing of  the  Ways  Home"  the  number  of  regulars 
being  received  at  the  House  of  Correction  has 
dwindled  twenty-two  per  cent. 

It  costs  the  city  of  Chicago  $9.00  to  send  a  man 
to  the  House  of  Correction,  and  only  $4.99  to  make 
him  a  good  citiz,en  at  "The  Parting  of  the  Ways 
Home."  Over  12,000  men  are  released  from  the 
House  of  Correction  every  year.  In  nearly  every  in- 
stance when  these  men  are  freed  after  serving  their 
terms  their  credit  is  exhausted  in  every  direction. 
In  a  majority  of  instances,  of  course,  their  credit  was 
exhausted  before  they  were  locked  up.  To  open  the 
books  with  society  again  for  these  men  and  extend 
to  them  a  new  line  of  credit — that  is  the  function 
of  such  institutions  as  "The  Parting  of  the  Ways 
Home."  When  "The  Home"  fails  to  give  the  down 
and  out  man  who  seems  deserving  of  it  a  fresh 
credit,  then  the  institution  will  fail  of  its  purpose. 
Such  institutions  are  not  working  miracles.  If  a 
man's  nerve  cells  are  broken  down,  we  cannot  re- 
build them.  Some  men  who  come  to  me  are  past 


Prison    Problems  199 

the  dead  line  of  human  hope  or  aid.  For  them  there 
is  pity — is  sympathy,  if  you  please — but  "The 
Home"  is  not  for  them.  This  is  a  world  of  actu- 
ality and  Life  is  a  march  and  a  battle.  It's  a  good 
deal  more  than  a  dress  parade  at  any  stage  of  the 
game.  For  the  man  who  has  dropped  out  of  the  ranks 
and  wishes  to  "come  back"  and  has  the  red  blood  to 
back  his  ambition,  there  should  be  a  place  for  him 
to  take  his  first  step  in  the  procession.  Such  a  home 
should  be  distinctly  not  the  place  for  the  drone 
the  shirker  or  the  coward.  For  the  man  who  is 
strong  and  wise  enough  to  recognize  that  he  alone 
is  the  master  of  his  fate  and  the  "captain  of  his 
soul,"  the  latch-string  ought  to  be  always  out. 

Let  us  look  a  few  facts  in  the  face.  If  a  man 
is  arrested  on  the  Fourth  of  July  for  harboring  an 
overflow  of  patriotism  in  his  system,  he  is  sentenced 
to  seven  months  in  the  workhouse,  serves  his  time, 
gets  a  few  days  off  for  good  conduct  and  on  Christ- 
mas Eve  he  is  liberated. 

When  he  was  arrested  he  wore  a  summer  suit,  low 
cut  shoes,  a  straw  hat  and  gauze  underwear.  His 
clothes  were  stored  away  when  he  began  his  sen- 
tence, and  prison  garb  was  provided  for  his  use. 

It  is  Christmas  Eve,  and  all  the  world  is  looking 
for  Santa  Claus,  the  children  are  gathered  in  thous- 
ands of  churches  to  sing  and  say  speeches  about  the 
Christ  who  came  to  bring  "Peace  on  Earth,  Good 
Will  to  Men." 

An  iron  gate  creaks  and  a  poor  shivering,  half- 
scared  stranger  steps  from  the  prison  in  a  summer 
suit,  low  cut  shoes,  straw  hat  and  gauze  underwear. 
He  has  just  been  given  five  cents  by  the  prison  offi- 
cials. He  has  been  staked,  it's  up  to  him  to  make 
good. 


200  Prison    Problems 

This  is  not  the  saddest  part  of  our  story,  for  per- 
chance we  may  have  a  woman  to  deal  with,  as  is 
frequently  the  case. 

Think  of  a  woman,  maybe  your  own  flesh  and 
blood,  turned  loose  upon  society  with  five  cents  as 
her  available  assets.  Can  we  wonder  that  she  gives 
up  the  struggle,  yields  to  the  temptations  of  the 
city's  depravity,  falls  into  the  toils  of  the  cunning 
ones  who  live  on  the  weakness  of  their  fellows? 

Some  day  the  state  will  take  care  of  its  released 
prisoners,  just  as  the  up-to-date  church  looks  after 
its  new  converts,  or  the  business  college  looks  after 
its  graduates. 

If  the  National  Harvester  Company  were  to  sell 
farm  machinery  giving  as  little  thought  to  repair- 
ing and  replacing  the  weak  parts  as  society  does  in 
dealing  with  the  most  delicate,  intricate  and  won- 
derful machine  ever  constituted — man — it  would 
go  broke  inside  of  a  year. 

If  a  doctor  were  to  have  a  sick  man  come  to  him 
a  hundred  different  times  with  the  same  complaint, 
he  would  be  considered  a  criminal  Quack  if  he  were 
to  prescribe  the  same  medicine  continuously,  when 
he  saw  it  did  no  good. 

Yet  that  is  exactly  what  the  court  does.  It  sends 
the  same  patient  to  the  work  house  for  as  many 
as  a  hundred  times.  Each  visit  only  weakens  the 
victim.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  state  to  make  it  as 
hard  as  possible  to  do  wrong  and  as  easy  as  possible 
to  do  right. 

We  aim  to  drive  out  anger  and  revengeful 
thoughts  which  corrode  the  heart  that  generates 
them  by  instilling  love,  sympathy  and  hope,  coupled 
with  material  help  for  the  ex-cortvict,  who  needs 
help,  to  help  himself. 


Prison    Problems 


201 


Analysis  of  the  first  one  thousand  men  received 
at  the  "Home,"  showing  countries  and  creeds : 


Countries. 
402  Americans 
207  Irish 
102  Colored 
85  Germans 
35  Polish 
32  English 
28  Scotch 
22  Sweden 
15  Jews 
12  Bohemia 
11  Norway 
9  France 
8  Austria 
7  Italian 
7  Russia 
6  Denmark 
3  Finland 
2  Wales 
2  Canada 
1  Japan 
1  Spain 
1  Hungary 
1  Ludwig 
1  Holland 


Church. 
496  Catholics 
127  Methodists 
94  Baptists 
89  Lutherans 
71  Presbyterians 
44  Episcopalians 
18  Congregational 
15  Jews 

14  Ch.  of  England 
13  Christian 

5  Reformed 

3  Christian  Science 

3  Unitarian 

2  United  Presby. 

2  Disciple 


Evangelical 
Ch.  Catholic  Zion 
Nazarine 
United  Bro. 


1,000  1,000 

24  countries ;  19  creeds. 


P.  S.  Since  this  article  was  written  a  new  Parting 
of  the  Ways  Home  has  been  started  at  32  Lacock 
St.,  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  with  Rollo  H.  McBride  in 
charge. — Ed. 


202  Prison    Problems 


COURTS  FOR  THE  POOR. 

Any  one  who  has  ever  attended  a  police  court, 
squire's  trial,  or  watched  the  legal  proceedings  of 
the  officers  that  have  to  do  with  the  poor,  the  needy, 
the  unfortunate,  the  down-and-outer  has  been 
shocked  at  the  speed  with  which  the  victims  are  run 
through  the  legal  mill. 

The  writer  once  saw  a  young  man,  who  lived  in 
Piedmont,  W.  Va.,  arrested  outside  the  corporate 
limits,  charged  with  stealing  chickens  at  Luke,  Md. 
The  Mayor  of  Piedmont  was  kept  from  sending  this 
young  fellow  to  the  penitentiary  in  West  Virginia 
for  stealing  chickens  in  Maryland  only  because  it 
was  the  Maryland  officials  who  had  arrested  him  and 
claimed  the  right  to  try  him  in  that  state,  so  they 
took  him  to  Westernport,  Md.,  and  arraigned  him 
before  a  man  whose  sign  above  his  so-called  office 
announced  to  all  the  world  that  he  was  a  "Justice 
of  the  'Piece.' "  At  this  hearing  it  was  unmistaka- 
bly proven  that  it  was  this  young  man's  father  and 
brother  who  stole  the  chickens,  whereupon  the 
Judge,  who  used  his  vest  as  an  adjunct  to  a  cuspi- 
dor, sentenced  his  victim  to  serve  a  year  in  the 
Maryland  reformatory  for  living  (in  West  Virginia) 
without  visible  means  of  support.  He  served  his  time. 

Compare  his  case  with  that  of  Harry  K.  Thaw  or 
any  other  rich  or  well-to-do  man  or  woman  who  has 
money  to  pay  a  lawyer  to  twist  and  untwist  the 
legal  tangles  just  as  long  as  the  ducats  are  forth- 
coming. 

We  have  heard  much  of  reforming  the  judiciary, 


Prison    Problems  203 

recalling  judges  and  their  decisions,  but  all  of  this 
is  only  for  the  upper  class.  What  is  needed  is 
the  abolition  of  the  fee  system  whereby  "artificials" 
of  every  type  are  made  to  prosper  by  the  misfortune 
of  others. 

All  judges  should  be  elected  at  a  salary  to  serve 
the  people  instead  of  serving  the  ordinary  under- 
strappers who  live  by  the  lucre  they  coin  from  crime. 

Kansas  has  made  a  start  in  the  right  direction  in 
establishing  courts  for  the  poor. 

At  least  $3,000,000  in  small  unpaid  debts  is  lost  to 
the  poor  in  the  United  States  annually  because  they 
have  not  the  means  to  bring  prosecution,  according 
to  Judge  Eli  Nirdlinger  of  the  small  debtors'  court, 
which  was  established  at  Leavenworth,  Kansas, 
May  1st. 

The  small  debtors'  court,  the  first  of  its  kind  in 
the  United  States,  was  established  entirely  for  the 
poor,  who  are  unable  to  deposit  costs  or  to  employ 
a  lawyer.  Provision  for  the  court  was  made  in  a  law 
drafted  by  the  attorney  general  of  Kansas,  John 
S.  Dewson. 

Mayors  or  councils  of  cities  of  the  first  class  may 
appoint  a  judge  to  sit  in  the  court  or,  in  the  case  of 
counties,  the  county  courts  make  the  appointment. 
Leavenworth  is  the  first  city  to  take  advantage  of 
the  law. 

All  that  is  required  of  a  plaintiff  in  the  small 
debtors'  court  is  to  show  that  he  is  too  poor  to  make 
a  deposit  for  the  costs  or  to  employ  counsel.  Upon 
such  showing,  he  is  permitted  to  file  his  complaint. 
The  judge  then  summons  the  defendants.  The  serv- 
ice may  be  oral,  by  mail  or  telephone.  On  appear- 
ance of  the  defendant,  the  case  is  tried.  The  judge 


204  Prison    Problems 

inquires  into  the  merits  of  the  case  and  renders  his 
judgment  according  to  justice  of  the  complaint. 

No  lawyer  or  any  other  than  defendant  and  plain- 
tiff are  allowed  to  take  part  in  the  litigation.  The 
defendant  may,  however,  appeal  his  case  to  the 
higher  courts,  providing  that  such  appeal  is  accom- 
panied by  a  bond  in  double  the  amount  of  the  judg- 
ment and  $15  additional  for  the  payment  of  a  lawyer 
to  prosecute  the  case  for  the  plaintiff  in  the  district 
court. 

In  the  debtors'  court  no  costs  are  assessed  or 
charged  to  either  party.  The  defendant  pays  the 
debt,  if  the  judge  decides  he  owes  it,  and  is  dis- 
charged. 

Since  the  establishment  of  the  court  forty  cases 
have  been  disposed  of.  Every  cent  paid  into  the 
court  was  due  unfortunate  persons  who  were  unable 
to  collect  money  due  them  for  work,  because  they 
couldn't  afford  to  go  into  the  district  courts  and 
stand  the  expense  of  costs  and  attorney's  fee. 

The  litigants  included  carpenters,  plasterers, 
house  cleaners,  washerwomen,  dressmakers,  cooks 
and  waiters.  Judge  Nirdlinger,  who  is  a  former 
judge  of  the  Leavenworth  county  district  court, 
serves  in  debtors'  court  without  compensation. 

"It  is  surprising,"  he  said,  "that  people  of  means 
show  such  neglect  in  the  payment  of  the  poor  for 
the  labor  they  perform.  Among  the  claims  that 
came  before  the  court  was  one  against  a  lawyer  who 
owed  a  poor  washerwoman  $18.46  for  more  than 
two  years.  Upon  notice  from  the  debtors'  court 
the  claim  was  paid  promptly." 

On  the  first  day  that  Judge  Nirdlinger  sat  in  his 
court,  he  had  the  folllowing  cases  before  him : 


Prison    Problems  205 

Bill  for  $11.90  for  painting  barn  and  back  of 
fence.  Paid. 

Bill  for  $2.70  for  washing  for  family  for  two 
weeks.  Paid. 

Bill  for  55  cents  for  washing  for  bachelor.     Paid. 

Bill  for  $20  of  waiter  in  restaurant;  $10  ordered 
paid  and  case  settled. 

"According  to  the  figures  I  have  gathered,  and 
from  the  money  paid  into  this  court  since  its  estab- 
lishment, there  must  be  at  least  $3,000,000  lost  to 
the  poor  in  the  United  States  annually  in  small 
debts  that  simply  go  by  the  board,"  said  Judge  Nird- 
linger. 

"Every  lawmaker  in  the  country  should  see  that 
his  state  enacts  such  a  law.  It  is  the  greatest  thing 
that  ever  happened  in  Kansas  to  protect  the  poor 
working  people  from  being  cheated  out  of  their  just 
claims." 

Lincoln  Steffins  has  said :  "There  will  come  a 
time  when  crime  will  disappear,  but  that  time  will 
never  come  or  be  hastened  by  the  building  of  jails 
and  penitentiaries  and  scaffolds.  It  will  only  come 
by  changing  the  conditions  of  life  under  which  men 
live  and  suffer  and  die." 

This  move  to  establish  courts  for  the  poor  is  a 
step  forward  and  one  that  means  a  now  and  here 
effort  to  bring  about  that  very  condition  that  Steffins 
has  foretold. 


206  Prison    Problems 


FORTY   YEARS   OF   SOLITARY   CON- 
FINEMENT. 

Forty  years  in  solitary  confinement!  What  for? 
Picture  will  you  a  lad  of  only  eleven  years  of  age,  be- 
ing sent  to  the  Reform  School,  and  again  we  ask 
what  for?  Because  he  and  another  boy  were  sup- 
posed to  have  whipped  a  saloon  keeper's  son,  and 
this  tender  hearted  agent  of  mercy,  who  had  never 
brought  trouble  into  a  home,  this  friend  of  the 
drunkards'  children,  this  orphans'  protector,  this 
saintly  bloat,  who  had  made  his  money  out  of  the 
wrecked  homes  and  wasted  lives  of  his  patrons, 
offered  $500.00  for  the  arrest  of  the  boys  who  had 
trounced  his  own  dear,  little  weakling,  who  couldn't 
take  what  every  boy  has  had,  a  sound  thrashing. 

Everyone  who  has  studied  into  the  antiquated 
methods  of  most  of  our  present  reform  schools  can 
guess  at  what  these  juvenile  crime  hot  houses  must 
have  been  forty  years  ago. 

Still  the  record  of  the  boy's  service  shows  that 
he  was  promoted  and  never  punished  while  at  the 
school,  and  his  own  testimony  is  that  he  saw  little 
to  criticise  while  there.  But  when  he  returned  home 
he  began  to  pay  the  real  price  of  his  supposed  crime.* 

A  young  girl  by  the  name  of  Kittie  Curran  sud- 
denly and  strangely  disappeared,  and  of  course  the 
finger  of  suspicion  was  pointed  at  once  to  the 
Pomeroy  boy  as  he  had  just  returned  from  the  re- 
form school. 

Then  a  boy  was  found  murdered  in  the  Boston 
Marsh  and  soon  the  officers  were  certain  that  no 


Prison    Problems  207 

one  could  have  committed  these  horrible  deeds  but 
an  ex-convict.  The  whole  story  is  a  revolting  one, 
and  its  details  have  almost  been  lost  in  the  labyrinth 
of  time,  but  the  verdict  of  that  jury,  as  commuted 
by  the  governor,  still  stands  as  one  of  Massachu- 
setts' unfinished  tasks. 

The  great  state  that  gave  the  lyceum  its  birth  and 
its  first  real  purpose,  the  state  that  wept  over  the 
sins  of  black  slavery  in  the  South,  the  state  that 
morally  gagged  every  time  the  word  "bondage"  was 
mentioned,  has  for  forty  years  maintained  a  worse 
form  of  slavery  than  ever  existe-d  in  South  Caro- 
lina and  the  New  Orleans  slave  mart,  which  stirred 
the  soul  of  Abraham  Lincoln  to  righteous  wrath 
was  an  altar  of  justice  as  compared  to  the  den  of 
gloom  where  this  human  being,  made  in  the  image 
of  his  Creator,  has  been  confined  for  forty  long 
years.  To  me,  Simon  Legree  was  a  merciful  bene- 
factor as  comparel  to  Warden  Russell,  who  for 
twenty-one  years  has  carried  out  the  blind  verdict 
of  a  jury,  perhaps  long  since  dead. 

There  are  only  two  conclusions  that  a  thinking 
mind  can  arrive  at.  First,  this  man,  Jesse  Pomeroy, 
is  a  degenerate,  unsound  of  reason,  with  defective 
mental  and  moral  faculties.  If  this  be  true,  he 
should  have  had  medical  treatment,  he  should  have 
been  in  a  hospital,  had  fresh  air,  God's  sunshine,  a 
mother's  love  in  more  constant  potions,  not  a 
monthly  capsuled  dose.  Shame  on  the  state !  Thrice 
shame  on  the  officials  if  Jesse  Pomeroy  is  as  de- 
scribed! 

Second,  he  is  sane,  fully  equipped,  mentally  and 
morally ;  therefore  responsible  for  his  every  act  and 
his  punishment  has  been  deserved. 


208  Prison    Problems 

More  shame  to  the  stupidity  of  those  who  wish  to 
be  looked  up  to  as  reformers,  who  prate  of  their  large 
percentage  of  regenerated  souls  who  have  been 
saved  to  the  world  after  having  tarried  for  a  spell 
in  their  paradise  regained !  More  shame  to  the 
stupidity  of  those  who  are  still  administering  the 
same  treatment  that  a  dead  jury,  and  perhaps  a  dead 
governor,  have  prescribed.  Surely  this  is  another 
case  of  "The  Calf  Path"  described  by  Sam  Walter 
Foss.  It  is  on  a  plane  with  the  doctors  who  bled 
George  Washington  to  death  to  cure  a  cold  "A 
little  vestige  of  that  cold  still  remains,"  said  the 
medicine  men,  and  again  they  let  still  more  blood, 
and  the  pow-wow  was  kept  up  until  death  ended 
the  farce  tragedy. 

If  forty  years  of  solitary  confinement  has  failed 
to  cure  Jesse  Pomeroy,  then  in  God's  name,  in  hu- 
manity's name,  how  many  more  years  must  this  an- 
tiquated, inhuman  remedy  be  adminstered  before  the 
patient  is  cured,  or  like  "the  father  of  his  country," 
dies  in  the  process  of  being  cured? 

Either  Jesse  Pomeroy  ought  to  be  given  the  liber- 
ty that  he  has  earned,  or  he  ought  to  be  treated  as 
a  sick  man.  Which  shall  it  be? 

Read,  will  you,  this  pitiful  letter: 

47  Pearl  St.,  North  Weymouth,  Mass., 

February  3,  1913. 
Mr.  Fred  High. 

Dear  Sir:  Your  letter  of  January  14th  came  safe. 
Should  have  answered  sooner,  but  I  am  old  and 
feeble  and  there  are  days  I  cannot  write.  The  book 
of  "Prison  Problems"  also  came.  I  am  deeply  in- 
terested in  it  and  thank  you  and  those  with  you  that 


Prison    Problems  209 

are  interested ;  if  you  and  your  friends  can  do  some- 
thing for  my  son,  you  will  have  the  heartfelt  thanks 
of  a  mother  that  has  suffered  all  these  years.  I 
have  tried  repeatedly  for  years  in  my  son's  behalf, 
but  you  see  I  am  only  a  woman  and  we  have  no  in- 
fluence so  they  shut  me  off. 

\Yhen  Governor  Foss  was  elected  I  thought  he 
might  do  something.  I  went  to  him  and  he  received 
me  very  kindly.  I  talked  with  him  over  three  hours 
and  I  came  away  hopeful,  but  somehow  there  has 
been  nothing  done. 

I  have  never  believed  my  son  guilty  of  these 
crimes,  NEVER!  I  never  had  any  trouble  with  him 
until  we  moved  to  South  Boston.  It  was  there  I 
received  my  death  blow.  We  moved  to  South 
Boston  the  first  of  August,  1871.  Jesse  was  born 
in  Charleston  and  we  lived  there.  He  went  to 
school  with  other  children  and  lived  in  the  house 
with  another  son  and  never  had  any  complaints  of 
him.  He  grew  up  as  others  did,  was  a  happy  and 
bright  boy.  About  a  year  before  we  moved  to  South 
Boston,  there  was  a  liquor  dealer's  son  in  Chelsea,  a 
boy,  beaten  and  whipped.  It  was  said  at  the  time 
there  were  two  high  school  boys  that  whipped  him 
and  went  in  the  direction  of  Everett.  My  boy  was 
only  eleven  years  old  then,  but  the  father  of  the  boy 
offered  a  reward  of  five  hundred  dollars  for  their 
apprehension.  As  I  said,  we  moved  to  South  Bos- 
ton after  Jesse  commenced  to  go  to  the  Biglow 
grammar  school.  He  only  went  twenty  days.  We 
were  strangers  there  and  there  were  some  boys 
whipped  and  the  police  knew  we  were  strangers. 
Jesse  says  he  was  coming  up  Broadway  and  he 
stopped  and  looked  in  at  station  6.  He  said  a  police- 


210  Prison    Problems 

man  came  out  and  took  him  inside.  They  kept  him 
until  about  6  p.  m.,  then  they  came  to  my  house  and 
asked  about  Jesse  and  said  they  thought  he  was 
the  boy  that  whipped  the  Chelsea  boy  a  year  before. 
I  told  them  he  could  not  be  the  one  for  he  was  too 
young,  but  they  kept  him  and  would  not  let  me  see 
Jesse  and  the  next  morning  he  was  taken  to  Bos- 
ton. They  did  not  give  me  time  to  get  a  lawyer : 
there  was  no  warrant  served,  they  had  it  all  their 
own  way  and  sent  him  to  the  reform  school.  I 
have  always  thought  if  we  would  have  had  a  lawyer 
to  have  looked  into  this  case  that  Jesse  would  not 
have  been  sent  to  the  reform  school,  and  those  offi- 
cers who  got  the  reward  would  not  have  had  things 
their  own  way  as  they  did. 

I  did  not  know  what  to  do.  I  was  completely 
paralyzed.  I  always  had  a  horror  of  those  institu- 
tions and  it  almost  killed  me  to  have  Jesse  go  there. 
I  visited  Jesse  at  the  reform  school  and  they  al- 
ways spoke  well  of  him.  He  never  was  punished 
there.  He  was  there  over  a  year  and  they  let  him 
come  home.  I  can  see  now  I  should  not  have  stayed 
in  South  Boston  when  he  come  home.  I  ought  to 
have  moved  away,  but  I  did  not  realize  what  was 
before  me.  This  was  the  beginning  of  our  trouble 
and  I  have  written  to  you  so  you  might  know  the 
beginning. 

Jesse  came  home  in  February  and  the  18th  day  of 
March  there  was  missing  a  girl  eleven  years  old  and 
it  was  said  she  was  carried  away  in  a  team.  It  was 
talked  in  my  place,  as  we  kept  a  little  store  in  Broad- 
way across  from  where  we  lived.  The  store  was 
once  a  large  store,  but  they  made  two  stores  by 
putting  a  metal  board  partition  through  the  center. 


Prison    Problems  211 

There  was  a  family  who  lived  overhead  and  two 
men  who  kept  the  other  half  of  the  store  on  the 
right,  and  one  cellar  under  the  whole.  The  family 
upstairs  kept  their  wood  and  coal  in  the  cellar,  but 
I  did  not  use  the  cellar,  as  I  kept  my  coal  across  the 
street  where  I  lived.  I  did  quite  a  little  business 
at  dressmaking  and  everything  went  well  until  the 
22nd  of  April  it  seems  there  was  a  small  boy  found 
murdered  on  the  marsh  a  mile  or  more  from  where 
we  lived. 

Some  one  started  the  story  that  the  Pomeroy  boy 
being  at  home  he  might  have  done  the  deed.  There 
was  no  suspicion  against  him  otherwise  than  this. 
The  officers  came  and  arrested  him.  Of  course  there 
was  great  excitement  and  some  went  so  far  as  to 
say  he  had  made  away  with  the  girl.  There  was  so 
much  talk  that  they  sent  officers  and  searched  the 
cellar.  They  found  nothing.  There  being  so  much 
talk  I  closed  up  my  store  the  last  day  of  May.  I 
procured  counsel  for  my  son  and  we  expected  every- 
thing would  come  out  afi  right  and  my  son  would 
be  proven  innocent.  I  had  plenty  of  work ;  the  store 
was  sold  to  a  Mr.  Nash,  a  grocery  man ;  there  were 
some  repairs  and  had  been  nearly  in  the  place  nine 
days  when,  on  the  18th  day  of  July,  they  found  a 
body  supposed  to  be  the  gird,  missing.  Now  they 
had  searched  that  cellar,  I  am  told,  a  number  of 
times  and  found  nothing,  yet  when  this  body  was 
found  it  was  not  utterly  covered  only  a  little  ashes 
strewn  over  it.  \Ye  did  not  put  any  ashes  in  the 
cellar.  Now  if  Jesse  killed  that  girl  she  must  have 
been  there  four  months  from  the  18th  day  of 
March  until  the  18th  day  of  July.  I  am  sending  you 
a  little  pamphlet.  It  is  very  much  worn,  but  is  the 


212  Prison    Problems 

only  one  I  have  left,  besides  the  original  writing, 
written  by  him  after  his  trial.  I  am  afraid  it  will  be 
hard  for  you  to  read  it,  but  it  is  the  best  I  can  do. 
You  will  see  by  this  he  was  tried  and  convicted  of 
murder  in  the  first  degree.  When  arrested  he  was 
fourteen  years  and  four  months  old.  Mr.  Gaston, 
who  was  governor,  did  not  act  in  the  case  and  left 
it  until  Mr.  Rice  was  elected  governor.  He  with 
the  counsel  commuted  the  sentence  to  solitary  con- 
finement for  life.  This  is  why  Jesse  is  kept  in  soli- 
tary confinement.  He  is  not  allowed  to  go  to  chapel 
or  have  any  of  the  privileges  that  the  other  inmates 
have,  subject  to  all  the  punishments  but  to  none 
of  the  privileges. 

Warden  Bridges  has  been  warden  here  eighteen 
or  twenty  years  and  he  has  carried  out  the  sen- 
tence to  the  full  extent;  there  is  no  one  allowed  to 
see  Jesse  but  me.  I  go  to  see  him  once  a  month 
unless  he  is  not  under  punishment,  and  he  is  al- 
lowed to  write  me  once  a  month.  He  has  been  try- 
ing for  the  last  seven  years  to  get  the  records  of  his 
case,  but  they  will  not  let  him  have  them.  He  want- 
ed a  lawyer  some  three  years  ago.  I  wrote  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  Suffolk  Bar  and  told  them  he  was 
friendless,  but  no  one  responded. 

Jesse  was  only  a  boy  of  a  little  over  fifteen  years 
when  he  went  to  Charlestown  States  Prison.  In  his 
solitude  he  put  himself  down  to  study  and  has 
succeeded  in  educating  himself.  He  has  never  been 
punished  for  anything  but  digging  out  of  his  cell. 
This  he  has  done,  the  closer  they  kept  him  con- 
fined the  more  he  tries  to  get  out.  Jesse  is  not  a 
stupid  man.  He  is  a  learned  man  and  could  do  a 
great  deal  of  good  if  out.  He  has  already  served  a 


Prison    Problems  213 

life-time  and  ought  to  come  home,  but  you  see 
the  people  do  not  know  the  real  "Jesse  Pomeroy," 
no  one  gets  to  see  him  and  he  is  friendless  with  the 
exception  of  his  mother.  I  can  do  but  little;  I  am 
old,  over  seventy,  and  I  feel  my  time  is  short  here, 
but  through  all  these  years  I  have  cherished  the 
hope  that  before  I  passed  away  I  might  have  my 
son  with  me  once  more.  He  has  just  been  under 
punishment  for  getting  out  of  his  cell,  what  few 
privileges  he  had  were  taken  away  and  they  put 
him  in  the  dark,  solitary  cell  on  bread  and  water  for 
six  days.  I  do  not  know  what  he  did  do.  I  went 
over  to  see  him,  but  was  told  he  was  under  punish- 
ment and  could  not  see  him  until  after  the  fourth 
of  February.  It  was  very  hard  for  me  as  I  am 
feeble  and  it  is  quite  a  journey,  a  storm  came  up  and 
I  had  a  hard  time  getting  home. 

I  am  very  sorry  this  has  happened.  It  has  been 
twelve  years  since  he  has  done  anything  before  this 
last  attempt.  I  only  wish  some  one  could  get  to  see 
him  and  they  would  find  a  very  different  man  than 
he  has  been  represented.  In  one  of  my  visits  to 
him  I  was  talking  to  one  of  the  officers  about  Jesse 
and  he  said  to  me  that  Jesse  is  a  most  cheerful 
prisoner,  there  is  not  a  bit  of  harm  in  him.  I  have 
prayed  to  God  to  raise  up  friends  to  help  my  son  and 
to  keep  him.  I  do  believe  He  has  heard  my  prayer. 
I  thank  God  that  I  have  been  spared  to  visit  my  son 
and  bring  a  little  encouragement  to  him  in  his 
silent  life. 

Please  excuse  this  letter.  Do  not  know  as  you 
can  read  it.  Thank  you  for  your  kindness  and  hope 
and  pray  you  may  be  able  to  do  something  for  my 
son  and  may  God  give  you  and  those  with  you  sue- 


214  Prison    Problems 

cess  in  bringing  about  the  reforms  of  prisons  and 
those  who  have  fallen  by  the  wayside. 

Very  truly, 
(Signed)  Mrs.  Ruth  A.  Pomeroy. 

Harry  A.  Rothrock,  a  young  minister,  recently 
made  an  investigation  of  this  case  and  Warden  Rus- 
sell said  to  him : 

"Jesse  Pomeroy  is  an  ordinary  prisoner  causing 
no  trouble,  only  trying  to  escape." 

That  disposes  of  one  myth  which  always  pictured 
the  prisoner  as  a  degenerate,  morally  and  mentally 
unsound.  Why  is  he  held  in  solitary  confinement? 

The  warden  says  that  the  people  of  the  state  are 
so  bitter  against  him  that  if  they  would  let  him 
out,  some  one  would  kill  him ;  the  people  would 
lynch  him. 

Is  Massachusetts  the  state  that  is  always  railing 
against  the  south  for  lynching  negroes?  Did  you 
ever  hear  of  a  southern  mob  lynching  a  negro  forty 
years  after  a  crime  had  been  committed? 

Upon  the  warden's  own  testimony  Jesse  Pomeroy 
should  at  least  be  treated  as  an  ordinary  prisoner. 
This  Simon  Legree  of  cultured  Boston  outdoes  the 
famous  slave  driver  that  Mrs.  Beecher  set  to  the 
task  of  killing  Uncle  Tom  in  that  he  gloats  over  the 
fact  that  Pomeroy  is  given  an  hour  every  day  in 
which  to  fill  his  system  with  pure  air.  There  is  a 
window  in  his  cell,  sayeth  this  kind  keeper.  There 
are  also  electric  lights  in  his  den  and  the  Boston 
Theologic  student  was  surprised  at  the  cleanliness 
and  convenience  of  the  cell-rooms.  Sleeping  in  a 
toilet  room  is  certainly  the  acme  of  sanitary  condi- 
tions and  ought  to  be  conducive  of  great  spirituality. 


Prison    Problems  21. 'i 

The  reason  why  this  prisoner  can't  even  be  al- 
lowed to  attend  the  prison  concerts,  as  given  by  the 
warden,  is  that  he  committed  a  number  of  indescrib- 
able horrors  when  he  was  a  boy,  forty  years  ago. 
Witches  of  the  Pilgrims  save  us  from  such  a  for- 
giving spirit. 

Governor  Eugene  Foss  was  then  appealed  to  as 
follows :  "Is  Jesse  Pomeroy  mentally  sound,  there- 
fore responsible  for  his  acts?  If  so,  don't  you  think 
that  he  has  suffered  enough  for  the  crimes  that  he 
is  supposed  to  have  committed,  and  why  shouldn't 
he  have  at  least  the  freedom  of  the  penitentiary  the 
same  as  an  ordinary  criminal  ?  Will  you  kindly  state 
what  the  objection  would  be  to  giving  him  a  pardon  ? 
Surely  he  has  suffered  enough  to  merit  his  release. 

"If  he  is  mentally  unsound  and  irresponsible,  why 
isn't  he  given  medical  treatment  instead  of  punish- 
ment? It  is  our  purpose  to  try  to  raise  a  fund  to 
come  to  the  relief  of  this  man  and  his  aged  mother, 
and  I  would  thank  you  very  much  if  you  would 
give  me  any  facts  as  you  may  have  them." 

The  Governor  answered :  "Pomeroy's  sanity  has 
never  been  questioned.  He  is  a  moral  degenerate 
of  the  worst  type.  It  would  be  utterly  useless  for 
you  to  try  and  raise  money  to  come  to  the  relief 
of  this  man ;  because  public  sentiment  in  this  com- 
monwealth is  entirely  adverse  to  his  liberation,  the 
general  feeling  being  that  he  is  not  a  safe  man  to  be 
at  large." 

We  preach  in  thunderous  tones  about  the  coward- 
ice of  Pontius  Pilate  who  listened  to  the  mob  two 
thousand  years  ago,  but  how  many  sermons  have 
been  hurled  at  this  political  flip-flopper  whose  record 
as  a  political  turn-coat  finally  became  such  a  stench 


216  Prison    Problems 

in  the  nostrils  of  the  old  Bay  State  electorate  that 
at  the  last  election  he  was  thoroughly  repudiated  as 
a  candidate  for  re-election,  polling  about  one-tenth 
as  many  votes  as  his  own  Lieutenant  Governor 
polled. 

Ohio  has  had  a  case  almost  similar  to  the  Pomeroy 
disgrace.  For  twenty  years  a  human  being  has  been 
pilloried  and  for  three  years  his  meals  were  passed 
into  his  cell  on  a  pole,  but  when  Governor  Cox  was 
elected  he  walked  right  in  where  the  poor  trembling, 
cowardly  guards  were  afraid  to  venture  even  when 
armed  with  rifles,  billies,  and  other  accoutrements 
of  both  the  murderer  and  coward. 

Today  Ohio's  incorrigible,  her  brutal  murderer, 
has  the  privilege  of  the  yards,  he  is  harmless  under 
kind  treatment  whereas  he  was  a  demon  when 
handled  by  demons. 

Governor  Cox  said :  "If  there's  anything  that  so- 
ciety has  tried  and  made  complete  failure  of,  it  is  the 
old  time  method  of  dealing  with  so-called  criminals." 

Massachusetts  has  tried  for  forty  years  to  crush, 
torture,  and  brutalize  Jesse  H.  Pomeroy  and  at  the 
end  of  this  period  we  find  her  Governor  sanctioning 
the  inhuman  treatment  that  is  still  being  inflicted 
upon  this  man  as  a  punishment  for  a  crime  he  is 
said  to  have  committed  forty  years  ago. 

Pomeroy  is  even  denied  the  privilege  of  attend- 
ing the  concerts.  Even  the  religious  services,  which 
in  the  light  of  the  prison  practices  are  the  cheap- 
est mockery,  are  for  the  others  but  not  for  him. 

But  think  of  a  so-called  newspaper  like  the  Boston 
Post  stooping  to  the  pusillanimous  infamy  of  coin- 
ing a  mother's  tears  into  pennies  by  the  sale  of  a  few 
extra  copies  of  its  miserable  sensational  "Extras." 


Prison    Problems  217 

July  30th  this  miserable  rag  belched  forth  with 
scare-heads  that  announced  the  blood-curdling  news 
that  Pomeroy  had  tried  again  to  escape.  He  was 
foiled,  ah  yes,  just  at  the  psychological  moment,  the 
guard  woke  up  and  found  Pomeroy  had  two  rusty 
nails  and  a  cotton  string  in  his  cell.  With  these 
formidable  instruments  he  would  have  sawed  the 
iron  bars,  murdered  the  state  officials,  surrounded 
the  National  guard,  and  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
he  would  have  had  the  old  Bay  State  shoved  into  the 
ocean.  Horrors ! 

Governor  Foss  has  said  that  much  of  this  feeling 
against  this  poor  fellow  has  been  created  by  the 
yellow  journalism  of  his  state;  that  the  sensational 
reports  about  his  attempts  to  break  out  have  been 
manufactured  out  of  nothing. 

\Yhat  manner  of  man  is  Jesse  H.  Pomeroy?  Let 
us  read  one  of  his  own  letters  written  to  his  mother 
for  it  is  a  good  key  to  the  whole  mystery. 

Charlestown,  Mass.,  April  17,  1913. 
Dear  Mother: 

I  write  you  my  usual  monthly  letter  in  the  hope 
that  all  is  well  with  you,  and  that  you  are  looking 
ahead,  with  some  expectation  of  a  change  for  the 
better,  at  no  distant  date.  Your  letter  of  April  4th 
reached  me,  and  I  am  greatly  cheered  to  know  that 
some  are  thinking  of  my  good,  and  that  some  effort 
is  being  made  in  my  behalf.  We  are  grateful  to 
those  fearless  souls,  who  are  moved  to  do  and  dare 
for  me,  because  my  case  has  ever  been  misrepresent- 
ed, and  there  is  a  determination  to  hide  the  true 
state  of  affairs.  Those  friends  have  an  inkling  of  the 
truth  which  has  been  so  carefully  hushed  up  all 
these  years,  and  we  must  do  our  part  to  put  them 


218  Prison    Problems 

in  possession  of  our  side  of  the  case,  to  strength- 
en their  hands,  that  they  may  speak  with  confidence, 
and  act  intelligently  in  the  matter.  This  it  is  our 
lawful  privilege  to  do,  no  matter  what  anyone  may 
think  on  the  subject.  Our  family  affairs  are  in  our 
own  hands,  to  be  dealt  with  as  we  see  fit. 

For  that  reason  we  have  a  right  to  get  a  lawyer, 
and  we  have  a  right  to  present  our  case  properly  to 
him,  so  he  may  know  what  is  at  stake,  and  act  ac- 
cordingly. I  trust  that  you  have  brought  to  the 
attention  of  Mr.  High  and  his  associates,  all  that  is 
said  of  my  case  in  my  letter  of  March  18,  1913.  It 
will  give  them  all  the  facts  they  need,  as  a  determin- 
ation is  evident  to  deny  to  me  an  opportunity  to 
furnish  a  complete  copy  of  the  records  in  my  case ; 
but  that  fact  need  not  cause  any  worry.  Any  one 
can  go  to  the  State  House  of  the  Suffolk  Co.  Social 
Law  Library,  and  get  copies  of  the  records  in  my 
case  and  Mr.  High  or  any  one  can  write  to  Mr.  J. 
Cronin,  clerk  of  the  Suffolk  Co.  Supreme  Court  of 
Massachusetts,  and  get  copies  of  all  the  documents 
I  filed  in  1906,  asking  a  writ  of  error.  These  will 
put  our  friends  in  possession  of  every  essential  thing 
except  what  relates  to  the  charge  of  torture  and  the 
testimony  of  the  coroner  Dr.  Allen,  which  I  did  not 
know  of  in  1906,  and  which  I  fully  explained  in  that 
letter  of  March  1st,  giving  a  full  list  of  all  docu- 
ments, which  must  be  obtained  from  the  State 
House ;  but  first  get  those  from  the  Supreme  Court. 
The  numbers  are:  1,  2,  3,  4,  9,  10,  737.  The  charge 
will  not  be  much,  if  anything  at  all,  and  I  think  we 
should  help  our  friends  and  get  these  things  our- 
selves, and  then  let  Mr.  High  use  them.  I  hope  you 
have  laid  this  before  Mr.  Warren.  Tell  him  I  am 


Prison    Problems  219 

anxious  to  have  him  name  a  fearless  man,  who  will 
do  this  for  us,  and  that  I  will  pay  the  bill.  It  should 
not  take  a  week,  and  $5.00  a  day,  I  can,  and  will 
account  for.  Let  me  know  at  once  what  Mr.  War- 
ren says.  It  may  not  cost  $5.00  a  day  either. 

The  misconduct  of  the  chief  justice  at  my  trial,  in 
the  underhand  and  whispered  communications  he 
had  with  the  jury,  for  which  he  was  censured  finally 
by  Judge  Morton,  his  colleague,  and  the  audible  pro- 
test by  the  audience,  "you  are  taking  advantage  of 
that  boy,"  will  clearly  prove  the  unrighteousness  of 
the  proceedings,  in  violation  of  law,  at  my  trial,  for 
the  chief  justice  had  no  excuse  to  act  so.  We  need 
a  lawyer  to  investigate. 

Tell  my  friends  I  am  refused  opportunity  to  get  a 
lawyer,  refused  the  documents  in  my  case,  as  per  list 
of  March  18,  1913,  have  had  no  hearing,  no  decision 
on  the  merits  of  my  case,  all  of  which  is  in  violation 
of  the  laws  of  Massachusetts. 

I  got  the  papers  you  left  me.  I  hope  Charles  is 
well  and  has  seen  you.  My  regards  to  all.  Holiday 
comes  the  19th.  I  hope  you  will  enjoy  the  day.  Our 
visit  is  due  the  20th. 

I  trust  the  rain  is  over  and  that  fair  weather  will 
push  spring  time  along  that  crops  may  have  an 
early  start.  Your  son, 

(Signed)  JESSE  H.  POMEROY. 

Wrhy  don't  the  guards,  keepers,  and  state  officials 
treat  Pomeroy  with  greater  kindness? 

Why  didn't  Tammany  Hall  reform  before  it  was 
knocked  out?  Why  don't  policemen  throw  away 
their  clubs?  Why  don't  thieves  reform  while  they 
are  stealing,  why  wait  until  they  are  caught? 


220  Prison    Problems 

What — ask  those  men  to  say  they  have  been 
wrong  all  these  years  in  keeping  Jesse  Pomeroy  in 
solitary  confinement?  Turn  state's  evidence  against 
themselves?  It's  too  much  to  hope  for. 

But  what  is  needed  is  for  every  one  who  reads 
this  story  to  write  a  letter  to  Governor  David  F. 
Walsh  and  ask  him  to  at  least  treat  Pomeroy  as  a 
human  being,  to  give  him  the  privileges  of  the  yard, 
the  benefits  of  the  entertainments,  the  blessings  of 
the  chapel,  and  if  it  is  not  asking  too  much  to  give 
ear  to  the  pleas  of  this  dear  mother  who  has  suf- 
fered hell  on  earth. 

How  long  does  it  take  a  lie  to  die?  Dr.  Frederick 
A.  Cook  has  spent  a  fortune,  yea  more,  he  has  spent 
four  years  trying  to  overcome  that  same  brand  of 
manufactured  public  opinion  that  has  been  fed  by 
the  yellow  journals  and  venal  press.  Dr.  Cook  has 
found  that  the  battle  with  Polar  hardships  was 
child's  play  as  compared  with  his  battle  to  maintain 
his  honor  and  self  respect  in  the  face  of  the  on- 
slaught that  was  forced  on  him  by  one  of  the  mean- 
est cowards  of  all  time,  the  Sultan  of  the  North. 

What  show  then  has  poor  Pomeroy  when  he 
finds  himself  the  victim  of  a  cruel  conspiracy  and  a 
hungry  mob  of  newspaper  scribblers  who  are  will- 
ing to  convert  an  aged  widow's  tears  into  slander 
for  scare-heads? 

Why  can't  we  try  kindness,  love  and  patience, 
abolish  brutality,  and  barbarity,  and  see  if  Jesse  H. 
Pomeroy  is  not  a  man  who  will  respond  to  humane 
appeals?  Who  knows  but  that  he  may  even  yet  take 
his  place  in  the  world  of  usefulness  to  comfort  and 
cheer  his  faithful  old  mother  who  has  stood  by  him 
through  all  these  years,  faithful  and  true ;  watching, 


Prison    Problems  221 

waiting,  working  and  hoping  against  hope  that  her 
boy  will  yet  be  given  back  to  her. 

Clarence  Darrow,  Chicago's  noted  Criminal  and 
Labor  Attorney,  in  that  now  famous  Plea  in  His 
Own  Defense  to  the  Jury  that  exonerated  him  of 
the  charge  of  bribery  at  Los  Angeles,  Calif.,  said : 

"I  want  to  say  that,  when  you  know  the  man, 
no  matter  whom — I  have  known  men  charged  with 
crime  in  all  walks  of  life,  burglars,  bankers,  murder- 
ers— when  you  come  to  touch  them  and  meet  them 
and  know  them,  you  feel  the  kinship  between  them 
and  you.  You  feel  that  they  are  human ;  they  love 
their  mothers,  their  wives,  their  children;  they  love 
their  fellow  man.  Why  they  did  this  thing  or  that 
thing  remains  the  dark  mystery  of  a  clouded  mind, 
which  all  the  -science  of  all  the  world  has  never 
yet  been  wise  enough  to  solve." 

Do  the  guards,  officials  and  whatnots  of  the  Mass- 
achusetts penitentiary  and  the  yellow  journals  know 
the  same  Jesse  Pomeroy  that  the  faithful  mother 
describes?  How  can  they?  You  might  as  well 
hand  the  score  of  a  symphony  orchestra  to  a  band 
of  Hottentotts,  and  ask  them  to  bring  forth  the  same 
soul  vibrations  that  were  born  in  the  brain  of 
Mendelssohn. 

Will  you  help,  dear  reader,  to  prevent  this  disgrace 
from  becoming  a  greater  monstrosity  and  travesty 
on  justice? 


222  Prison    Problems 


MANUFACTURING  CRIMINALS. 

One  of  the  most  effective  pleas  of  the  temperance 
orator  has  always  been  to  show  the  drunkards  by  the 
hundred  thousand  toppling  into  drunkard's  graves 
while  at  the  recruiting  office  the  young  men  and 
boys  were  enlisting,  100,000  a  year,  in  this  army  of 
woe. 

In  the  war  on  the  White  Slave  Traffic,  it  has 
been  this  same  appeal  to  mothers  and  fathers,  to 
brothers  and  sisters,  to  sweethearts  and  friends  that 
has  been  so  effective  in  arousing  the  public  con- 
science, always  asleep  but  never  dead.  It's  the  cry 
that  60,000  innocent  girls  must  be  brought  into  the 
lives  of  sin  and  degradation  each  year  to  fill  the 
places  made  vacant  by  the  horrible  death  of  the 
inmates,  that  has  been  the  one  most  effective  way 
of  reaching  the  public  heart-strings. 

In  the  days  when  Charles  Dickens  wrote,  there 
were  schools  of  vice  which  were  presided  over  by 
the  Pagans  and  recruited  by  the  Artful  Dodgers.  A 
crude  clumsy  system  that  soon  gave  wray  to  the 
new  modern  method  of  having  the  state  operate  the 
criminal  factories  with  the  police  and  officers  of 
the  law  as  employment  agents. 

Let  us  look  at  a  sample  reform  s'chool,  taking  for 
instance  the  one  at  Pontiac,  111.,  where  the  horrors 
of  negro  slavery,  the  unspeakable  shame  of  the  white 
slavery,  the  tortures  of  industrial  slavery,  have  all 
been  combined  and  heaped  upon  the  shoulders  of 
the  little  children  that  were  sent  there  to  be  re- 
formed. 


Prison    Problems  223 

Here  are  some  of  the  things  the  board  of  five 
members  appointed  by  Governor  Edward  Dunne  re- 
ported : 

Physical  punishment  of  the  inmates  by  keepers, 
guards,  teachers  and  other  officers  was  the  rule 
rather  than  the  exception. 

Dr.  James  A.  Marshall,  reformatory  physician, 
made  a  practice  of  beating  up  newly  arrived  inmates 
with  fists  and  squeeges  and  was  brutal  almost  to  the 
point  of  ferocity. 

Boys  were  black-jacked  by  enraged  officials  upon 
slight  provocation,  and  that  in  the  chair-shop  and 
print-shop,  the  guards  in  charge  beat  up  boys  with- 
out restraint,  using  fists,  boots,  clubs  and  hammers. 

The  present  600  inmates  have  been  incarcerated 
in  the  "screens"  1,731  times,  nearly  three  times  per 
boy,  each  incarceration  meaning  the  loss  of  a  month's 
time.  The  time  taken  from  the  boys  in  this  manner 
totals  150  years. 

Boys  placed  in  the  "screens"  were  given  but  a 
single  slice  of  bread  daily  and  one  cup  of  water  and 
they  frequently  drank  water  from  the  basins  of  the 
toilet. 

Unspeakable  practices  have  been  prevalent 
throughout  the  institution,  much  as  the  result  of 
the  management  not  to  give  the  boys  a  chance,  and 
part  of  which  was  forced  upon  the  boys  by  torture. 

A  spirit  of  depraved  commercialism  had  taken  pos- 
session of  the  management  of  the  institution,  caus- 
ing the  boys  not  only  to  be  overworked,  but  unlaw- 
fully deprived  of  their  right  to  attend  school. 

The  credit  of  the  state  of  Illinois  was  extended 
for  a  period  of  time  to  an  unincorporated  concern 
that  was  a  mere  selling  name. 


224:  Prison    Problems 

Of  118  boys  whose  testimony  is  the  basis  of  the 
report,  97  had  been  the  victims  of  or  witnesses  to 
cruelties  which  are  seldom  inflicted  on  animals  and 
testified  to  depraved  elements  in  the  teachings  of 
the  institution.  Of  the  children  attacked  with  clubs, 
"billies"  and  pieces  of  furniture,  many  were  cripples 
and  imbeciles. 

The  punishment  records  show  that  for  the  calen- 
dar year  of  1912,  3,233  complaints  were  made  against 
boy  inmates.  The  prison  management  sustained 
every  one  of  these  complaints. 

The  board  recommends  that  "every  vestige  of  the 
system,  the  natural  growth  of  years  of  corrupt  prac- 
tice and  gross  mismanagement,  be  wiped  out." 

Dr.  Marshall,  institution  physician,  seemed  to  be 
possessed  with  the  conviction  that  every  boy  who 
came  to  the  reformatory  had  been  guilty  of  abomi- 
nable practices.  He  asked  each  boy  if  this  were  true. 
If  the  boy  replied  in  the  negative  he  used  the  squee- 
gee or- his  fists  upon  him.  Marshall,  during  his  four- 
teen years  as  physician  of  the  institution,  has  broken 
through  the  armor  of  self-esteem  and  self-respect  of 
thousands  of  boys. 

In  viewing  the  situation  within  the  institution  in 
the  light  of  revelations  of  the  investigation,  the 
board  cannot  repress  a  feeling  of  wonderment  that 
a  considerable  percentage  of  the  boys  have  been 
successful  in  preserving  a  slight  vestige  of  the  finer 
feelings  they  have  brought  with  them  into  the  insti- 
tution. 

When  confronted  with  these  revelations  that 
shocked  and  horrified  the  public,  the  superintendent 
of  this  "Reformatory"  fled  between  two  days  and 
never  stopped  fleeing  until  he  reached  the  mountain 
fastnesses  of  Idaho. 


Prison    Problems  225 

Why  were  those  cruelties  and  barbarities  tolerat- 
ed? Why  were  under-strappers,  lazy  guards,  crooks, 
with  the  "r"  dropped  out,  allowed  to  beat  cripples 
and  imbeciles?  It  was  the  system  of  graft  and  greed 
built  up  by  the  political  hucksters  who  have  de- 
spoiled even  the  state  eleemosynary  institutions  in 
their  greed  to  convert  them  into  political  assets. 

Nine  so-called  salesmen  were  on  the  Pontiac  pay- 
roll to  sell  desks  and  other  school  furniture,  manu- 
factured at  the  reformatory,  and  from  July  '07  to 
April  '08,  inclusive,  the  pay-roll  was  $10,010.35.  The 
sales  by  the  salesmen  were  $4,925.29  and  the  sales 
that  strayed  in  through  the  mails  were  $11,001.98. 

Now  the  ousted  republicans  bitterly  denounce 
the  democratic  state  administration  for  playing  poli- 
tics with  the  children  of  the  state  and  the  democrats 
are  relentless  in  their  warfare  against  the  wrongs  of 
the  political  machine,  built  by  the  republicans,  on 
the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  the  children. 

The  Truth  is  that  the  reformatory  at  Pontiac 
has  been  the  most  prolific  criminal  factory  in  the 
state  as  the  records  of  our  most  notorious  criminals 
reveal  the  fact  that  most  of  them  have  first  served 
time  in  some  so-called  reform  school. 

Are  all  such  schools  mere  criminal  factories?  Are 
the  heads  of  all  institutions  as  barbarous  as  Ex- 
Judge  R.  A.  Russell,  deposed  superintendent  at 
Pontiac?  These  institutions  and  many  of  their 
heads  are  victims  of  the  system.  Some  are  suffi- 
ciently strong  and  brave  enough  to  rise  above  their 
environment  and  deserve  all  the  more  credit  for  the 
good  work  they  have  done. 

One  of  the  most  humane  men  that  it  has  been 
the  writer's  pleasure  to  meet,  one  who,  in  a  large 


226  Prison    Problems 

measure,  even  unconsciously  stimulated  the  deter- 
mination to  compile  this  volume  of  Prison  Problems 
is  that  prince  of  goodfellows,  Pioneer  Prison  Re- 
former, Col.  C.  B.  Adams,  now  superintendent  of  the 
Boys'  Industrial  School  at  St.  Charles,  111. 

Colonel  Adams  was  formerly  at  Lancaster,  O., 
where,  years  ago,  he  was  a  great  believer  in  the 
efficacy  of  Lyceum  entertainment  as  an  adjunct  to 
education  and  religion  in  the  process  of  reformation 
and  regeneration. 

The  common  testimony  of  those  who  have  the 
children's  real  welfare  at  heart  is,  that  at  least  seven- 
ty-five per  cent  of  all  boys  and  girls  who  are  sent  to 
the  reform  schools  are  victims.  In  most  cases  it 
would  be  greater  justice  to  punish  the  parents. 

In  Georgia  a  boy  was  sent  to  the  reform  school 
for  eleven  years  for  stealing  a  five  cent  bottle  of 
Coco-Cola,  and  the  only  reason  the  judge  didn't 
make  it  twenty  years  was  that  the  boy  wasn't  young 
enough  to  serve  that  many  years  before  he  became 
of-  age. 

What  a  crime  against  childhood ! 

The  cure  of  crime  is  education,  just  as  the  cause 
of  sin  is  ignorance.  It  is  to  the  public  school  and 
not  to  the  reformatory  that  we  must  look  for 
our  lasting  results  for  betterment.  The  public 
school  holds  the  solution  of  our  social  evil  problem. 

If  we  will  all  quit  fighting  over  whether  the  Bible 
is  or  is  not  read  in  the  public  schools  and  get  the 
crime  of  sectarianism  out  of  our  systems,  get  down 
to  fundamentals,  study  the  children's  needs,  and 
provide  for  them,  we  will  be  better  able  to  convert 
all  prison  factories  into  reformatories,  and  not  until 
then  will  we  be  doing  our  full  duty. 


Prison    Problems  227 

Cesare  Lombroso,  the  noted  criminologist,  taught 
us  that  criminals  are  born,  not  made.  He  tried  to 
throw  the  blame  back  on  to  nature. 

Dr.  Goring,  for  years  a  medical  officer  in  a  large 
British  Prison,  shatters  Lombroso's  theory  of  born 
criminals  by  a  series  of  brilliant  tests  and  experi- 
ments that  prove  that  there  is  not  a  definite  criminal 
type.  He  asserts  that  the  men,  now  serving  prison 
terms  as  enemies  of  society,  have  not  chosen  a  career 
of  crime,  but  have  been  forced  into  it.  Most  of  them 
are  physical  or  mental  defectives  who  needed  assis- 
tance rather  than  punishment. 

H.  Fielding-Hall,  head  of  the  largest  prison  in 
the  world  says,  "The  cause  of  crime  is  'general'  not 
'individual.'  "  He  denies  the  existence  of  any  such 
thing  as  "criminal  disposition."  The  unpleasant 
and  even  inhuman  qualities  which  differentiate  the 
criminal  from  the  normal  man  are  not  innate. 

"There  is  no  use  trying  to  exonerate  society,"  says 
Fielding-Hall,  "by  saying  that  criminals  are  born, 
not  made.  They  are  made  by  society,  by  its  careless- 
ness and  cruelty." 


228  Prison    Problems 


IT'S  THE  SYSTEM  THAT  IS  WRONG. 

The  European  system  of  "tipping"  is  grafting  it- 
self onto  American  ways  until  today  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  get  a  meal  or  bed  at  hotels  and  restaur- 
ants without  bribing  every  flunkey,  lackey,  porter, 
waiter,  bell-hop,  hanger-on,  including  chefs  and 
chambermaids.  It's  all  a  species  of  bribery.  It 
weakens  the  giver  and  degenerates  the  one  who  re- 
ceives it.  It  builds  up  a  system  of  graft  that  finally 
becomes  a  license  for  petty  larceny. 

But  already  it  has  its  fangs  so  deeply  fastened  into 
our  American  customs  that  instead  of  its  being  a 
gratuity,  it  is  a  protection,  and  is  no  different  in 
principle  from  the  filthy  bribe  that  the  police  wring 
from  the  underworld  in  the  form  of  protection. 

Our  penitentiary  system  is  a  vile  travesty  on  jus- 
tice, but  it's  a  system  just  the  same. 

Warden  R.  McClaughry  is  perhaps  the  best 
known  prison  man  in  the  United  States.  He  re- 
cently resigned  and,  as  he  stepped  from  his  office, 
gave  as  his  reasons  for  leaving: 

"After  having  spent  forty  years  of  my  life  in  the 
management  of  prisons  and  fourteen  years  constant- 
ly in  charge  of  the  Federal  prison  at  Leavenworth, 
I  am  convinced  that  the  system  is  wrong. 

"I  am  retiring  from  this  position  because  of  the 
system.  I  want  it  understood  that  I  have  not  one 
word  of  complaint  to  make  against  the  present  ad- 
ministration. I  cannot  say  I  have  ever  been  mis- 
treated by  an  administration. 

"But  the  system  that  places  the  Attorney  General 


Prison    Problems  229 

of  the  United  States  in  direct  charge  of  the  Federal 
prisons  is  wrong.  His  other  duties  are  so  important 
that  he  should  not  be  taxed  with  the  petty  manage- 
ment of  these  prisons.  And  yet  he  is  the  only  per- 
son who  has  real  authority. 

"The  system  is  wrong  from  another  viewpoint. 
The  theory  of  the  law  is  to  punish  the  culprit.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  in  the  administration  of  the  law  it 
is  not  the  prisoners  who  suffer  nearly  so  much  as 
the  innocent  wives  and  children  left  behind  abso- 
lutely at  the  mercy  of  the  world. 

"When  the  breadwinner  of  a  family  is  convicted 
in  the  courts  and  he  is  sent  to  prison  to  pay  the 
penalty,  his  wife  and  children  are  left  helpless. 

"The  scientists  are  taxed  to  provide  the  most  im- 
proved facilities  for  guarding  his  welfare.  The  food 
he  is  given  is  always  wholesome  and  scrupulously 
clean.  The  task  of  the  management  is  to  provide 
tasks  for  him  that  will  fit  him  to  battle  with  the 
world  when  he  emerges. 

"But  not  one  thought  does  the  government  give 
to  the  despondent  wife  and  the  daughters  who  may 
be  entering  womanhood  and  who  until  the  head  of 
the  family  came  in  contact  with  the  law  may  never 
have  had  to  struggle  for  a  livelihood. 

"Work  should  be  provided  in  the  prison  walls  for 
all  the  prisoners,  so  that  they  could  earn  something. 
The  earnings,  of  course,  should  not  go  to  them. 
The  earnings  should  be  cared  for  by  government 
officials,  and  form  a  fund  that  should  go  toward  the 
support  of  the  families  of  the  men. 

"Thus  while  the  man  was  serving  his  time  he 
would  know  that  the  fruits  of  his  toil  were  going 
to  provide  for  his  family,  deprived  by  law  of  his 


230  Prison    Problems 

help.  He  would  know  that  not  one  cent  would  go 
to  enrich  the  coffers  of  the  man,  who  because  of  his 
influence  makes  a  profitable  contract  with  the  state 
or  national  government  and  for  a  ridiculously  small 
sum  owns  the  output  of  the  prisoner's  labor. 

"Of  course  such  a  plan  would  meet  with  disap- 
proval of  demagogues.  But  honest  labor  would  not 
object  to  competition  such  as  this,  when  the  fruits 
of  prison  labor  went  directly  towards  alleviating 
actual  want  and  did  not  go  to  create  the  fortunes 
of  those  contractors  who  wax  fat  on  the  prisoner's 
labor. 

"The  Federal  government  proudly  proclaims,  it 
does  not  tolerate  prison  labor.  The  institution  at 
Leavenworth  is  an  example.  Not  one  penny's  worth 
of  work  done  in  this  great  institution  comes  in  com- 
petition with  honest  labor.  And  this  is  true. 

"But,  if  you  inspect  the  theory  again  you  will  see 
where  the  Federal  prisoners  do  compete  with  honest 
labor.  The  government  needs  larger  prisons.  We 
have  not  room  enough  here  to  house  all  of  the 
prisoners. 

"Factories  should  be  established  in  the  prison 
walls.  The  prisoners,  many  of  whom  merely  waste 
their  time  on  needless  tasks,  could  be  made  to  feel 
that  they  were  in  reality  paying  the  debt  they  owe 
society  by  doing  a  work  that  would  relieve  want 
and  suffering. 

"The  system  is  wrong  again  when  it  permits  the 
sending  of  a  young  and  inexperienced  clerk,  repre- 
senting the  Department  of  Justice  to  inspect  and 
ascertain  the  condition  of  a  great  prison.  The 
young  men  are  eager  and  ambitious  to  accomplish 
a  great  work  and  win  a  name. 


Prison    Problems  231 

"They  may  be  ignorant  of  conditions,  but  they 
will  not  hesitate  to  make  reports  and  their  untrained 
eyes  are  not  likely  to  penetrate  the  true  condition 
as  are  the  men  who  have  passed  their  lives  in  the 
work  of  conducting  such  institutions  and  who  are 
familiar  with  workings  of  the  minds  of  men  over 
whom  they  rule. 

"A  board  of  control,  composed  of  eminent  men, 
one  from  each  of  the  democratic,  republican  and 
progressive  parties  would  be  the  ideal  manner  in 
conducting  the  Federal  prisons.  The  questions  of 
detail  that  are  now  put  up  to  the  Attorney  General 
could  be  passed  on  by  the  board  of  control,  and  the 
business  of  the  institution  would  not  be  hampered 
as  it  now  is. 

"Let  us  suppose  that  a  prisoner  needs  to  have  a 
tooth  filled.  The  physician  must  first  observe  the 
prisoner  and  must  report  to  the  warden.  The 
warden  must  take  up  the  matter  with  the  dentist. 
It  is  found  in  a  length  of  time  that  the  filling  of  the 
tooth  will  cost  $1.50.  The  necessary  papers  must 
be  drawn  and  the  entire  correspondence  submitted 
to  the  Attorney  General  at  Washington,  more  than 
a  1,000  miles  away. 

"Before  the  order  finally  comes  to  fill  the  tooth 
it  is  so  badly  decayed  it  must  be  extracted  and  an- 
other proposition  confronts  the  management. 

"And  should  by  any  chance  the  dentist  draw  the 
tooth  without  the  official  order,  there  comes  from 
Washington  a  long,  tedious  and  expensive  investi- 
gation over  a  matter  so  trivial  that  a  board  of  control 
would  set  the  matter  right  within  five  minutes." 

On  September  20,  1913,  a  booklet  of  seventy-eight 
pages  was  issued  by  John  Grant  Lyman  then  in 


232  Prison    Problems 

the  Los  Angeles  County  Jail,  charged  with  the  crime 
of  being  insane. 

"In  September,  1911,  I  had  a  beautiful  home  at 
2068  Hobart  Boulevard,  Los  Angeles,  an  office  in 
the  Consolidated  Realty  Building,  6th  and  Hill  Sts., 
and  a  financial  stake  in  the  Panama  Development 
Company's  business,  216  Mercantile  Place. 

"At  that  time  I  was  growing  cotton  at  El  Centre, 
California,  with  a  view  of  proving  costs  and  later 
building  a  cotton  mill  in  Los  Angeles,  if  conditions 
warranted  it. 

"I  was  also  giving  financial  backing  to  an  outfit 
prospecting  for  oil  in  Wyoming,  and  had  other  busi- 
ness interests  in  various  parts  of  the  world  remuner- 
ative and  prosperous.  About  the  first  of  September, 
1911,  I  had  gone  to  San  Francisco  for  a  short  visit 
and  intended  making  a  business  trip  to  Portland, 
Vancouver  and  Honolulu,  where  I  expected  to  make 
arrangements  with  the  manager  of  a  Hawaiian  sugar 
plantation  to  take  charge  of  similar  work  in  Panama. 

"Without  a  word  of  warning  or  complaint  on  the 
part  of  any  one  with  whom  I  had  business  dealings, 
the  Panama  Development  Company's  offices  were 
raided  and  all  their  books  and  papers  carried  away, 
the  offices  closed  by  two  postal  inspectors.  Simul- 
taneously I  was  seized  in  my  rooms  in  San  Fran- 
cisco without  a  warrant,  by  men  not  authorized  to 
make  arrests,  and  placed  in  the  dungeon  of  the 
Eddy  St.  Jail,  San  Francisco,  one  of  the  vilest  spots 
mortal  man  was  ever  lodged  in,  the  odor  from  the 
excreta  of  former  inmates  being  almost  overpower- 
ing. Here  I  was  kept  nearly  twenty-four  hours 
without  food  or  drink,  denied  all  communication 
with  friends,  and  then  taken  out  and  arrested. 


Prison    Problems  233 

"Meanwhile,  these  men  who  had  seized  me,  re- 
turned to  my  rooms  and  stripped  them  of  every 
valuable,  I  possessed,  taking  all  my  books  and  pa- 
pers and  records  of  every  description,  warehouse 
receipts,  stock  certificates,  money,  heirlooms,  and 
some  trinkets  that  were  priceless  to  me.  Also  some 
wearing  apparel  and  other  personal  property,  all  to 
the  value  of  $25,000  no  part  of  which  has  been  re- 
turned or  accounted  for. 

"Because  of  my  repeated  efforts  to  recover  my 
property  through  the  letters  which  follow,  and  to 
secure  a  trial  (I  have  now  been  imprisoned  more 
than  two  years  and  have  not  yet  had  a  hearing  on 
the  charge  under  which  I  am  held),  it  has  been 
charged  that  I  am  insane.  Assistant  United  States 
District  Attorney  Regan  might  have  stated  with 
equal  truth  and  more  candor,  that  for  many  weeks 
he  had  sent  representatives  here  to  urge  me  to 
plead  guilty,  offering  me  a  light  sentence  if  I  would 
so  plead,  coupled  with  the  threat  that  I  would  not 
be  tried  for  many  months  if  I  did  not,  until  finally, 
within  a  week  I  have  been  threatened  that  if  I  did 
not  plead  guilty,  the  pending  charges,  the  date  of 
trial  for  which  has  finally  been  fixed  for  October 
14th,  would  be  dropped  and  that  I  would  be  re-in- 
dicted and  held  for  another  year  before  trial. 

"Do  you  wonder  that  I  am  not  insane?" 

A  series  of  letters  follows  in  which  he  pleads  for 
a  speedy  trial.  These  letters  are  addressed  to  Hon. 
James  McReynolds,  Attorney  General,  to  Federal 
Judges,  Senators,  Congressmen,  editors,  and  even  to 
President  Wilson,  and  yet  only  two  of  those  ap- 
pealed to  thought  enough  of  this  man's  pleas  to  even 
answer  them. 


234  Prison    Problems 

These  two  men  were  Hon.  Wm.  D.  Stephens,  a 
representative  in  Congress  from  that  district,  and 
Hon.  Brand  Whitlock,  the  well  known  humanitarian, 
then  Mayor  of  Toledo,  Ohio. 

On  July  7,  1913,  we  find  this  prisoner  pleading 
with  the  United  States  Marshal  to  allow  the  jailer 
to  take  him  to  a  dentist's  office.  He  wrote :  "I  am 
suffering  greatly  from  my  teeth  and  am  unable  to 
eat  any  solid  food."  In  his  letter  of  August  21st,  he 
pleads  to  the  Editor  of  The  Los  Angeles  Tribune  as 
follows : 

"The  federal  physician  as  well  as  three  dentists 
have  examined  me  and  after  giving  me  all  the  aid 
possible,  stand  ready  to  make  affidavit  that  the 
balance  of  the  work  necessary  to  afford  me  perma- 
nent relief  must  be  done  outside.  Considering  the 
fact  that  there  are  several  dentists  who  have  offices 
within  the  purlieus  of  this  jail,  it  is  absurd  to  offer 
as  an  excuse  for  denying  me  treatment  that  'Lyman 
will  escape.' 

"I  have  been  moved  about  3000  miles  and  lodged 
in  nine  different  jails  since  my  first  arrest  and  have 
not  yet  had  a  hearing. 

"At  times  too  I  have  been  caged  like  a  wild  beast 
and  exhibited  to  the  populace  in  chains,  yet  human 
treatment  that  would  not  be  denied  a  dog  has  been 
refused  me  by  United  States  Assistant  District-At- 
torney, Regan." 

The  last  heard  from  Lyman  he  was  still  trying 
to  get  a  requisition,  voucher,  caveat,  or  permit  or 
some  other  form  of  red-tape  folderol,  so  that  he 
could  get  his  teeth  attended  to. 

Warden  McClaughry  knew  what  he  was  talking 
about  when  he  said:  "Before  the  order  finallv  comes 


Prison    Problems  235 

to  fill  the  tooth,  it  is  so  badly  decayed  it  must  be  ex- 
tracted." 

And  still  Lyman  writes :  "My  case,  while  almost 
unbelievable,  is  by  no  means  exceptional." 

The  system  whereby  wreck  and  ruin  can  be  thrust 
upon  an  individual  or  an  enterprise  by  right  of 
might  or  position,  is  criminal  in  its  baseness. 

We  lash  ourselves  into  a  frenzy  over  the  so-called 
"Ritual  Murders"  of  Russia,  because  in  so  doing 
our  politicians  have  an  eye  on  the  Jewish  vote  and 
our  editors  see  new  or  enlarged  department  store 
ads  in  this  campaign  and  sales  of  a  few  more  pa- 
pers. 

We  rave  over  the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  an  Amer- 
ican in  any  foreign  country,  but  when  the  scene  is 
laid  at  our  own  door,  we  are  silent. 

Anyone  who  wishes  to  become  more  familiar  with 
the  workings  of  the  "The  Spy  System"  that  honey- 
combed the  administration  at  Washington  under  the 
reign  of  "Theodoric"  ought  to  get  a  copy  of  "The 
Siege  of  University  City"  published  by  E.  G.  Lewis, 
of  St.  Louis,  Mo.  There  is  a  tale  worthy  of  Wall 
Street.  Get  House  Resolution  109,  62nd  Congress, 
3rd  Session,  Report  No.  1601,  printed  March  1,  1913. 

This  report  was  signed  by  William  A.  Ashbrook, 
Ohio;  Joshua  W.  Alexander,  Missouri;  William  C. 
Redfield,  New  York;  Walter  I.  McCoy,  New  Jersey; 
Richard  W.  Austin,  Tennessee ;  C.  Bascom  Slump, 
Virginia ;  Horace  M.  Towner,  Iowa ;  and  from  it  we 
gather  the  following  facts: 

"For  nearly  seven  years  the  Government  of  the 
United  States,  through  the  Post  Office  Department 
and  the  Department  of  Justice,  has  been  almost  con- 
tinuously prosecuting  Mr.  E.  G.  Lewis  of  the  vari- 
ous enterprises  with  which  he  is  connected.  The 


236  Prison    Problems 

action  of  the  Government  has  included  fraud  orders 
against  the  People's  United  States  Bank,  organized 
by  Mr.  Lewis,  and  against  Mr.  Lewis  personally, 
and  has  involved  repeated  examinations  into  the  af- 
fairs of  the  Lewis  Publishing  Company  and  other 
Lewis  undertakings.  Fourteen  indictments  or  more 
have  been  found  against  Mr.  Lewis  and,  although 
most  of  them  have  been  quashed,  three  long  and  ex- 
pensive trials  have  taken  place — two  resulting  in 
disagreement,  the  other  in  acquittal  on  four  counts 
and  a  disagreement  on  seven  counts.  Some  indict- 
ments are  still  pending.  Meanwhile  proceedings  re- 
lating to  the  fraud  order  against  Lewis  and  the 
United  States  Band  have  taken  place  in  Washington. 
Inspectors  in  the  employ  of  the  Government  have 
scoured  the  country,  hunting  up  parties  who  would 
complain  against  Mr.  Lewis  or  testify  for  the  Gov- 
ernment at  the  trials.  Every  effort  that  the  organ- 
ized power  of  two  great  departments  could  exert 
has  been  used  at  enormous  expense.  As  a  result  sev- 
eral large  business  concerns  managed  by  Mr.  Lewis 
have  been  ruined,  among  them  the  People's  United 
States  Bank,  the  Lewis  Publishing  Company,  and 
the  University  Heights  Realty  and  Development 
Company ;  many  hundreds  of  small  investors  have 
lost  their  savings ;  and  the  sad  example  has  been 
shown  the  world  of  the  powers  of  a  great  Govern- 
ment exerted  successfully  in  an  effort  to  ruin  a 
single  individual,  and  yet  has  not  been  convicted  of 
any  violation  of  law." 

"The  Government  has  been  ill-served  in  this 
whole  matter.  The  inspectors  who  did  the  detective 
work  were  men  who  were  neither  accountants  nor 
experienced  in  the  lines  of  business  they  were  called 


Prison    Problems  237 

upon  to  investigate,  and  their  methods,  particularly 
in  the  case  of  one  Swenson  were  such  as  to  merit 
sharpest  disapproval." 

"The  arrangement  made  by  the  post-office  inspect- 
ors with  the  postmaster  at  St.  Louis,  whereby  a 
large  part  of  the  edition  of  one  of  the  Lewis  maga- 
zines, some  3,000,000  copies,  was  seized  without  the 
knowledge  of  Mr.  Lewis,  goes  far  to  justify  the 
claim  of  conspiracy  to  damage  the  business." 

"The  hearings  in  Washington  before  the  Assis- 
tant Attorney  General  for  the  Post  Office  Depart- 
ment, prior  to  the  issuing  of  the  fraud  order  against 
Lewis  and  the  People's  United  States  Bank,  were  a 
travesty  on  justice,  and  in  no  sense  were  of  a  judicial 
character,  although  they  involved  enterprises  in 
which  millions  were  being  invested." 

"Lewis,  having  turned  over  everything  he  pos- 
sessed, including  his  home,  in  an  effort  to  save  his 
various  enterprises  for  the  benefit  of  those  inter- 
ested, is  now  a  poor  man." 

It's  the  system  that  is  wrong,  and  the  individual 
officers  are  often  the  victims  of  the  system.  In  the 
light  of  what  we  have  just  read,  is  it  any  wonder 
then  that  Julian  Hawthorne  said  when  he  stopped 
out  of  the  penitentiary  at  Atlanta,  Ga.,  "I  feel  like 
a  man  who  has  just  come  back  from  Dante's 
Inferno." 


238  Prison    Problems 

IT'S  A  PROBLEM  FOR  THE  CHURCH. 

By  Ex-Judge  McKenzie  Cleland  of  Chicago. 

The  church  has  been  the  greatest  builder  of  all 
time.  It  has  built  men  and  women ;  it  has  built 
communities  and  nations.  But  our  jails  of  today 
are  destroying  more  human  lives  and  souls,  more 
communities  and  nations  than  the  church  even  can 
build  up  again.  Church  services  in  prison  are  the 
greatest  mockeries  the  good  people  of  the  church 
ever  lent  themselves  to.  It  is  like  striking  a  man  in 
the  face  to  preach  the  Golden  Rule  to  him  while  he 
is  in  jail.  Our  excuse,  to  our  consciences,  for  build- 
ing jails  and  imprisoning  men  and  women  in  them 
is  that  we  want  to  reform  the  men  and  women 
and  reduce  crime.  But  we  now  know  that  jails 
make  criminals  and  increase  crime. 

If  our  criminal  system  were  even  efficient,  one 
might  at  least  be  able  to  argue  for  it  on  that  ground, 
if  not  on  humane  grounds.  But  it  isn't  efficient.  In 
the  last  two  hundred  years  murder  has  increased 
two  hundred  per  cent.  Crime  costs  the  United 
States  $8,000,000,000,  which  is  more  than  it  takes 
to  run  the  government.  Yet  there  are  now  100,000 
murderers  at  liberty  in  the  United  States. 

The  church  must  do  something  to  stop  this.  It 
cannot  stop  it  while  society  continues  to  make  pro- 
fessional criminals,  and  society  now  is'  doing  that, 
by  our  jail  system.  We  imprison  a  young  man, 
guilty  of  a  first  false  step,  and  a  hardened  criminal 
together.  We  say  we  jail  the  young  man  to  reform 


Prison    Problems  239 

him.  But  we  say  we  jail  the  hardened  criminal  to 
punish  him.  Beautiful  paradox,  isn't  it? 

I  went  once  to  the  million-dollar  "reformatory" 
at  Pontiac,  where  we  send  boys  under  twenty-one 
who  have  transgressed  the  bounds  set  by  society. 
I  soon  understood  why  they  came  out  of  there  deter- 
mined to  wreak  vengeance  on  society  for  locking 
them  up.  Hardened,  brutal-looking  guards,  ready 
to  kill  at  the  first  free  move  of  an  imprisoned  boy, 
hurried  them  at  their  work.  At  night  they  were 
locked  up  in  dark,  evil-smelling  cells.  That  is  the 
sort  of  atmosphere  into  which  we  send  our  boys, 
for  "reformation."  You  can't  reform  any  one  that 
way.  Can  you  imagine  Christ  approving  this  sort 
of  reform?  Reformation  is  a  thing  of  the  heart. 
Our  way  only  turns  these  boys  out  as  clever  crooks, 
ready  and  anxious  to  prey  on  an  unjust  society. 
And  you  can't  blame ;  you  don't  dare. 

The  crime-teaching  value  of  our  jails  is  not  the 
only  bad  thing  about  them.  Jails  breed  disease 
and  poverty.  A  healthy,  moral  man  can't  live  in 
jail  without  growing  like  his  surroundings.  His 
surroundings  are  diseased,  sub-normal ;  so  he  be- 
comes sub-normal,  diseased  in  mind  and  body. 

We  are  spending  millions  in  America  to  fight 
tuberculosis.  Our  jails  are  the  greatest  promoters 
of  tuberculosis.  One  out  of  every  two  men  who 
go  to  jail  become  infected.  And  it  isn't  the  man  in 
jail  alone.  Sixty  per  cent  of  the  men  working  on 
stockings  to  be  sent  out  to  the  public  from  the 
South  Carolina  penitentiary  were  found  to  be  suf- 
fering from  tuberculosis.  It  is  the  same  every- 
where. The  man  who  said  we  have  shopped  send- 
ing murderers  to  the  gallows  only  to  send  them  to 
tubercular  graves  told  the  truth. 


240  Prison    Problems 

Did  you  ever  stop  to  think  of  what  is  likely  to 
happen  to  the  family  of  a  convict?  His  family  must 
starve  while  he  is  in  jail,  and  when  he  gets  out  he 
is  not  fitted  for  work.  Have  you  ever  seen  them 
coming  out  of  jail ;  their  spirits  crushed ;  their  heads 
hanging;  terror  in  their  eyes  and  fear  in  their 
breasts?  They  go  to  their  old  homes,  and  they  find 
them  broken  up.  They  wander  about  trying  to  pick 
up  the  threads  of  their  old  lives,  and  they  are  robbed 
and  beaten  down  on  every  hand.  No  employer  will 
take  them  unless  it  be  some  man  who  wants  his 
labor  cheap  and  easily  driven.  And  it's  all  our  fault, 
the  fault  of  us  who  attend  our  church  regularly,  and 
say  we  send  men  to  jail  to  be  reformed,  and  after 
they  are  freed,  refuse  to  believe  they  are  reformed 
and  so  will  not  give  them  a  chance.  You  break 
the  man,  and  you  rob  his  women  and  children  of 
his  support ;  you  steal  the  man's  life  and  you  starve 
his  family.  Do  you  think  that's  Christianity?  Do 
you  think  the  Lord  wants  you  to  rob  and  steal 
merely  to  teach  other  men  NOT  to  rob  and  steal? 

A  year  ago  the  governor  of  Arkansas  pardoned 
360  convicts.  He  said  he  did  it  as  a  protest  against 
cruelty,  and  he  called  the  state  prisons  "revengeful 
hells."  No  wonder  he  did,  for  he  personally  had  in- 
spected them  and  found  convicts  whose  flesh  was 
falling  from  their  bones  being  driven  like  beasts ; 
found  men  dying  of  tuberculosis;  found  men  dying 
of  every  disease  known.  And  one  of  the  men  he 
pardoned  was  serving  a  thirty-six-year  sentence, 
not  for  murder,  but  for  forging  an  order  for  nine 
quarts  of  whisky !  Look  at  what  Governor  Sulzer's 
commission  found  in  its  investigation  of  Sing  Sing. 
It  found  conditions  there  that  made  the  lives  of 


Prison    Problems  241 

the  poor  in  the  Dark  Ages  seem  like  lives  of  luxury 
and  ease. 

Of  course,  there  is  a  reason,  a  commercial  reason* 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  reform  or  punishment 
or  humanity.  For  we  run  our  prisons  to  make 
money.  The  superintendent  of  Auburn  prison,  N. 
Y..  testified  to  that  at  the  recent  investigation.  The 
mutiny  in  Michigan's  hell-hole  proved  it.  The  state 
prison  of  Maryland  used  to  make  more  money  than 
any  other,  and  the  cruelties  practiced  there  were 
worse  than  those  in  any  other  prison.  If  a  convict 
there  happened  to  pass  a  guard  who  was  feeling 
ugly  he  was  sent  to  the  "black  hole,"  that  later  was 
found  to  be  a  dungeon  swarming  with  rats  and 
vermin  and  filth. 

One  day  a  humane  man  was  elected  governor  of 
Maryland,  and  he  appointed  a  commission  to  inves- 
tigate these  things  that  long  had  been  whispered  of. 
If  you  want  to  read  a  report  on  hell,  read  the  report 
of  that  Maryland  commission.  It  found  that  two 
hundred  and  sixty  men  were  subjected  to  physical 
torture  in  this  money-making  prison  every  six 
months.  It  found  men  helping  to  make  the  prison 
money-making  who  were  dying  of  starvation  and  of 
tuberculosis  and  of  diseases  even  more  loathsome. 
I  tell  yon  this,  our  prison  system  has  done  more 
harm  to  the  country  than  the  saloon  and  the  gam- 
bling house  combined ;  that  it  has  killed  more  men 
than  war,  and  caused  more  crime  than  Satan.  It 
is  the  duty  of  the  churches  to  put  an  end  to  h%  and 
it  cannot  be  put  an  end  to  by  seventeenth-century 
methods  either. 


242  Prison    Problems 


THE  REMEDY. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem  we  have  no  remedy,  we 
offer  a  few  salves,  ointments  and  lotions  that  will 
relieve  the  trouble,  give  immediate  relief,  but  that 
is  all. 

The  prime  thing  is  to  awaken  public  interest  and 
this  volume  was  compiled  for  that  purpose.  There 
are  great  truths  that  need  to  be  discussed  for  out  of 
these  discussions  will  come  the  remedy. 

Jeremiah  Botkin,  warden  of  the  Kansas  Peniten- 
tiary, voices  the  common  cry  of  all  who  have  given 
this  subject  any  thought.  He  says: 

"Conditions  at  the  state  prison  cry  to  heaven 
for  a  remedy.  The  fault  has  been  with  no  previous 
warden,  certainly  not  my  predecessor.  When  I 
came  into  this  office  he  frankly  told  me  he  was 
'handing  me  a  lemon.'  Everything  a  warden  could 
do  he  and  most  of  his  predecessors  had  done.  Yet 
Lansing  is  today  a  blot  on  Kansas. 

"The  remedy  does  not  lie  in  my  hands.  I  wish 
that  it  did.  You  cannot  conceive  how  strongly 
I  wish  that  it  did.  It  lies  with  the  people  of 
Kansas  and  the  press  of  Kansas.  Legislators  will 
not  spend  the  money  unless  the  specific  expenditure 
is  urged,  and  urged  vividly,  upon  them  by  their 
constituents.  The  constituents  will  not  bring  this 
matter  to  the  attention  of  their  legislators  until 
they  have  had  its  paramount  importance  burned  in- 
to their  souls.  I  welcome  the  advent  of  the  press 
into  Lansing.  It  is  the  last  forlorn  hope.  Every 
unsanitary  and  uneconomic  condition  at  the  prison 


Prison  Problems  243 

can  be  remedied  with  money.  All  that  sympathy 
and  good  will  on  the  warden's  part  can  do  has 
been  done.  It  is  up  to  the  people  of  Kansas  to 
give  us  the  money — lots  of  it  and  now. 

"I  have  learned  the  value  of  publicity  in  getting 
reform.  But  perhaps  it  is  because  I  have  served 
most  of  my  life  as  a  Methodist  parson  that  I  ap- 
proach the  inmates  of  our  penetentiary  with  the 
idea  that  they  are  just  folks.  Something  like  the 
folks  in  Winfield  and  Arkansas  City  and  Topeka  and 
Kansas  City,  except  that  they  are  behind  walls,  the 
others  are  outside,  and  they  have  sinned  and  must 
be  punished.  The  rights  and  statutes  of  Kansas 
prescribe  that.  But  also  there  is  prescribed  by  the 
laws  of  humanity  an  obligation  on  the  state  and 
the  people  of  Kansas  as  to  the  manner  in  which  they 
shall  suffer  punishment.  When  the  state  and  peo- 
ple of  Kansas  go  beyond  the  statute  of  humanity 
in  punishing  them  they  are  the  moral  sinners. 

"Every  administration  for  years  has  brought  be- 
fore each  legislature  the  shame  of  the  cellhouses. 
It  is  barbaric,  brutal  and  furthermore,  unwise  to 
condemn  men  in  the  awful  places  we  have  to  con- 
fine them.  It  manufactures  criminals,  sickly  degen- 
erates and  tuberculars  out  of  retrievable  material. 

"The  prisoners  are  their  own  scavengers.  There 
is  no  running  water  of  any  sort.  Ask  the  doctor 
to  tell  you  what  disease  the  occupants  have,  in  the 
greatest  proportion  and  how  easily  men  communi- 
cate it  through  the  drinking  cups.  The  state  of 
Kansas  has  sent  many  well  men  to  this  penitentiary 
who  have  gone  out  afflicted  with  the  most  'horrible 
of  all  diseases.  There  is  no  ventilation.  The  air 
which  three  hundred  men  breath  in  this  cramped 


244  Prison    Problems 

space  is,  in  summer  still  and  stifling;  in  winter  still 
and  sickly  warm.  How  many  men  condemned  to 
be  confined  have  been  condemned  to  die  of  the 
great  white  plague  by  the  neglect  of  the  state  of 
Kansas  to  install  modern  cellhouses  can  never  be 
known.  The  obtainable  record  is  long  and  certain. 

"I  demand  for  these  men  at  least  new  cellhouses. 
I  demand  it  in  the  name  of  common  decency  and 
to  remove  the  crime  of  contributory  negligence  to 
manslaughter  from  the  record  of  the  legislature  of 
Kansas  which  has  had  this  matter  in  charge.  New 
modern  cellhouses,  such  as  the  federal  government 
has  installed  at  Leavenworth,  having  ventilation  and 
sanitation  and  cleanliness,  would  cost  $80,000.  That 
is  five  cents  for  each  person  in  Kansas.  There  isn't 
a  person  in  Kansas  able  to,  who  wouldn't  walk  to 
Topeka  with  their  nickle — if  they  could  see  the 
conditions  here.  The  spread  of  disease  through 
these  cellrooms  is  a  provable  matter.  The  citizens 
of  Kansas  might  as  well  knock  a  specified  number 
of  these  men  on  the  head  with  an  ax  as  to  continue 
so  to  confine  them." 

How  many  of  us  realize  the  awful  meaning  of 
what  'Dr.  Alexander  MacNicholl  of  New  York  City 
had  to  say  in  a  paper,  entitled  "Public  Health,  a 
Question  of  Alcoholic  Degeneracy,"  read  before  the 
re-cent  Congress  of  the  American  Medical  Society 
at  Philadelphia,  of  which  he  is  the  vice  president: 

"A  wave  of  degeneracy  is  sweeping  the  land — a 
degeneracy  so  appalling  in  its  magnitude  that  it 
staggers  the  mind  and  threatens  to  destroy  the  re- 
public; numbering  more  victims  than  have  been 
claimed  in  all  the  wars  and  all  the  epidemics  of 
acute  diseases  that  have  swept  the  country  within 
200  years. 


Prison    Problems  245 

"Modern  Scientific  methods  had  reduced  the  mor- 
ality from  acute  diseases  such  as  typhoid,  yellow 
fever  and  the  white  plague,  but  such  degeneracy  is 
shown  in  the  increasing  rate  of  morality  resulting 
from  the  spread  of  chronic  diseases,  that  within  thir- 
ty years  the  morality  from  chronic  diseases  has 
doubled  and  today  chronic  disorders  of  the  lungs, 
kidneys,  heart  and  other  organs  are  responsible  for 
more  than  half  the  deaths. 

"What  is  the  cause  of  this  degeneracy?  Statis- 
tics compiled  by  the  leading  insurance  companies 
and  represented  by  Sir  T.  P.  Whitaker  in  a  report 
to  the  British  Parliament  show  that  of  every  1000 
deaths  among  the  population  at  large  440  are  due  to 
alcohol.  This  would  mean  a  mortality  from  alcohol 
in  the  United  States  of  680,000  a  year." 

"We  annually  drink,"  says  Dr.  David  M.  Paul- 
son, "twenty-three  gallons  of  liquor  for  each  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  land." 

Dr.  Bertillion,  the  eminent  French  expert  crimin- 
ologist,  says :  "The  users  of  alcohol  are  twice  as 
likely  to  die  from  a  dozen  different  diseases  as  those 
who  are  temperate." 

"30,000  new  cases  are  admitted  to  our  asylums 
every  year.  Columbus,  O.,  has  181,511  inhabitants. 
There  are  more  people  in  our  insane  asylums  today 
in  this  country  than  there  are  inhabitants  in  that 
city." 

To  again  quote  Dr.  Paulson :  "Twenty  per  cent 
of  all  the  money  raised  by  taxes  in  the  state  of 
New  York  has  to  go  to  pay  for  the  care  of  their  in- 
sane. Only  one  other  item  costs  more  and  that  is 
their  education." 


246  Prison    Problems 

When  you  stop  to  think  that  there  are  more 
people  in  our  insane  asylums  than  there  are  stu- 
dents in  all  our  colleges  and  universities,  one  be- 
gins to  comprehend  something  of  the  problem. 

What  is  the  cure  for  this  disease?  What  is  the 
solution  of  our  Prison  Problems?  It  is  found  in  the 
few  words,  that  mean  so  much,  Public  Opinion. 

Not  long  ago  I  read  an  editorial  I  think  it  was 
written  by  Arthur  Brisbane,  in  which  he  said  :  "Pub- 
lic Opinion  is  the  conscience  and  the  intelligence  of 
the  race.  As  the  race  progresses  public  opinion  be- 
comes higher,  fairer,  more  consistent.  It  is  difficult 
for  us  to  realize  it  now,  but  the  day  is  coming  when 
public  opinion,  man's  collective  conscience,  will  do 
away  with  courts,  policemen,  jails,  detectives  and 
lawsuits.  That  will  be  the  beginning  of  a  real  civili- 
zation." 

Brisbane  gets  $75,000  a  year  for  writing  just  such 
philosophy.  If  he  got  $1,000  a  year  what  he  wrote 
would  be  anarchy.  But  it's  the  truth  just  the  same. 

As  long  as  parents  believe  in  whipping  children 
to  make  them  good,  the  church  has  to  scare  Hell 
out  of  the  people  to  get  them  to  Heaven,  the  com- 
munity will  lock  men  up  and  reform  them  by  cruel- 
ty and  barbarity. 

A  full  penitentiary  is  a  better  therometer  as  to  the 
state  conscience  than  is  a  church  filled  with  Holy 
howlers. 

Therefore,  the  first  remedy  is  publicity.  Editors 
should  be  asked  to  write  and  publish  editorials  along 
this  line.  Devote  space  to  this  question  for  we  are 
helping  ourselves  when  we  help  our  brothers.  Let's 
tell  the  world  that  Thomas  Mott  Osborn,  after  a 
week's  self-imposed  term  in  Auburn,  N.  Y.,  prison, 


Prison    Problems  247 

said  when  he  emerged,  "The  prison  system  is  singu- 
larly unintelligent,  ineffective  and  cruel.  It  is  ab- 
solutely a  form  of  slavery  and  all  the  great  truths 
enunciated  by  Lincoln  and  others  against  negro 
slavery  are  just  as  applicable  to  prison  slavery. 
It  takes  from  the  convict  his  individual  initiative  and 
freedom  of  action  and  he  becomes  an  irresponsible 
automaton.  When  he  returns  to  the  outside  world, 
therefore,  he  finds  he  is  unable  to  resume  his  own 
initiative  and  to  be  the  guider  of  his  own  destinies. 
This  accounts  for  so  many  men  who  leave  prison 
and  return  as  second  termers. 

"From  the  moment  that  a  man  arrives  in  prison 
he  is  made  to  realize  he  is  no  longer  an  individual 
human  being.  He  is  only  one  unimportant  unit  in  a 
community  which  is  undergoing  penance  for  cer- 
tain crimes,  and  the  penance  differs  only  in  the  mat- 
ter of  duration.  The  next  companion  on  my  tier  of 
cells  may  be  a  forger,  burglar,  a  murderer,  defaulting 
cashier;  he  may  be  a  college  graduate  or  a  Bowery 
tough,  an  intelligent  Yankee  or  an  ignorant  for- 
eigner, yet  all  are  clothed  alike,  treated  alike,  fed 
and  housed  alike,  and  each  man  ceases  to  be  an  in- 
dividual and  becomes  a  moving  automaton  in  a  gray 
suit  similar  to  all  others. 

"There  is  a  frightful  waste  of  human  life  and  in- 
genuity because  the  system  is  so  bad  that,  while 
there  is  some  reform,  the  principle  of  the  reforma- 
tion is  not  used  to  anywhere  near  its  measure  of  pos- 
sibilities. Realizing  perfectly  the  considerable  num- 
ber of  degenerates  and  other  undesirable  citizens 
included  in  the  ranks  of  the  prisoners,  I  was  amazed 
at  the  amount  of  splendid  courage,  fine  feeling,  and 
neighborly  interest  displayed  by  the  inmates  toward 
each  other." 


248  Prison    Problems 

One  of  the  most  potent  forces  for  the  spread  of 
truth  is  the  pulpit.  Surely  the  church  must  lead  in 
this  campaign  of  education.  If  each  one  of  you  who 
read  this  book,  will  only  take  it  upon  yourself  to 
see  that  your  minister  is  asked  to  preach  a  sermon, 
or  better  yet,  a  series  of  sermons  based  upon  the 
contents  of  this  little  volume,  you  will  be  doing  a 
public  and  patriotic  service. 

Rev.  Frank  D.  Adams,  of  Indianapolis,  Ind., 
preached  a  sermon  on  "Prison  Problems"  and  by  his 
eloquent  plea  and  hearty  urging,  so  enthused  his 
congregation  that  the  members  bought  forty  copies 
for  individual  use. 

Rev.  John  Welsch,  of  Wilmington,  111.,  preached 
forty  copies  into  the  hands  of  his  congregation. 

That  noted  and  dearly  beloved  Catholic  Priest, 
Father  P.  J.  Maccorry,  of  Wichita,  Kans.,  is  doing 
a  father's  part  in  the  spread  of  this  new  gospel  and 
the  papers  of  his  denomination  have  been  filled  with 
the  product  of  his  pen,  advocating  a  wider  reading 
of  this  volume. 

The  sermons  that  have  already  been  preached  up- 
on this  theme  have  made  themselves  felt  in  the 
moral  wave  that  is  sweeping  over  the  conscience  of 
men. 

The  men  and  women  on  the  platform  have  a 
golden  opportunity  to  prove  that  Senator  Robert 
M.  LaFollette  did  not  over-estimate  the  importance 
of  this  great  and  growing  institution,  when  he  said : 
"I  sometimes  think  that  from  the  days  of  Wendell 
Phillips  until  now,  the  lyceum  has  pretty  nearly 
been  the  salvation  of  the  country."  How?  By  fol- 
lowing the  example  of  Dr.  John  Gray  who  delivered 
one  hundred  chautauqua  addresses  last  summer,  and 


Prison  Problems  249 

at  every  one  of  them  he  told  the  audience  that 
"Prison  Problems"  was  the  best  book  on  the  subject 
he  had  ever  seen. 

Rollo  H.  McBride,  the  noted  Prisoner's  Friend, 
drew  rounds  of  vociferous  applause  by  his  endorse- 
ment of  this  effort  to  arouse  the  nation  to  a  realiza- 
tion of  the  wrongs  that  are  being  inflicted  upon 
our  brothers  and  sisters  in  the  name  of  reform. 

Out  in  California,  Mrs.  Mae  Guthrie  Tangier  has 
given  the  book  a  wide  review,  especially  in  temper- 
ance and  reform  circles. 

Down  at  Atlanta,  Georgia,  lives  one  of  God's 
noble  women,  Emma  Neal  Douglas,  who  placed 
forty  copies  of  "Prison  Problems"  in  the  hands  of 
the  state  legislators  when  the  campaign  was  on  for 
legislation  for  the  betterment  of  humanity. 

Then  there  is  the  little  woman  in  the  home  who, 
after  all,  is  the  power  that  moves  the  world,  what 
can  she  do?  Here  is  an  example.  At  the  Racine, 
Wisconsin,  Chautauqua,  Mr.  McBride  gave  his  lec- 
ture on  "Prison  Problems."  There  were  in  that 
audience  at  least  two  people  with  a  longing  to  do, 
as  well  as  to  say,  something  for  those  who  are  in 
trouble  and  so  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frank  Cherdron  were 
soon  at  work  reviewing  "Prison  Problems"  for  their 
local  papers,  urging  their  friends  by  letter  and  by 
word  of  mouth,  in  season  and  out,  to  read  "Prison 
Problems,"  and  it  was  through  Mrs.  Cherdron's  ef- 
forts that  Mrs.  Amy  D.  Winship,  the  eighty-four 
year  young  'varsity  student,  who  is  a  national  char- 
acter in  the  field  of  co-education,  became  interested 
in  "Prison  Problems." 

Mrs.  Winship  is  not  only  a  student  in  the  Univer- 
sitv  of  Wisconsin,  but  she  is  a  student  of  human 


250  Prison    Problems 

nature,  one  who  says :  "I  haven't  time  to  grow  old, 
besides  there  is  too  much  to  learn  and  too  much  to 
be  done  to  take  the  time  to  be  old." 

Mrs.  Winship  wrote  the  following  review  of 
"Prison  Problems"  which  appeared  in  the  Wiscon- 
sin State  Journal,  published  at  Madison.  It  was 
widely  copied  throughout  the  state: 

"  'PRISON   PROBLEMS,'    AN  APPRE- 
CIATION. 

"Mrs.  Amy  D.  Winship. 

"Recent  dispatches  about  the  new  experiment  in 
prison  management  and  labor  at  Camp  Hope,  Ill- 
inois, remind  thoughtful  citizens  that  there  are 
prison  problems  being  solved  well  in  some  states. 

"How  about  our  own  progressive  Wisconsin? 
Public  sentiment  and  public  judgment  are  slowly 
being  molded  along  the  right  lines  of  mercy  and  ref- 
ormation for  men  and  women  in  prison.  Brutaliz- 
ing confinement  for  the  convict  and  expensive  re- 
venge on  the  prisoners  are  falling  away  under  the 
ban  of  public  censure  for  such  methods. 

"Hardened,  hopeless  convicts,  overworked  and 
not  paid  by  private  monopolies  operating  in  prisons, 
through  dirty  politics  and  their  wardens,  are  but  a 
heavy  burden  to  society. 

"Mothers  of  men  are  beginning  to  see  there  is  a 
crushing  waste  of  human  life  behind  our  prison 
walls,  but  prison  conditions  are  undergoing  a  great 
change. 

"Mr.  Fred  High  of  Chicago,  the  editor  of  The 
Platform,  has  compiled  a  stirring  book  called  "Pris- 


Prison    Problems  251 

on  Problems,"  dealing  with  all  these  facts.  It  re- 
views the  prison  situation  from  all  sides. 

"Ida  Tarbell,  Warden  Saunders  of  Iowa,  Detective 
Pinkerton,  and  several  students  of  this  question,  tell 
of  present  conditions  and  opportunities  and  plead 
for  changes. 

"As  Dickens'  works  touched  all  England  on  the 
prison  question,  so  all  America  will  yet  be  soundly 
stirred  by  High's  'Prison  Problems.' 

"Social  conditions  today  contribute  to  the  crimi- 
nal tendency.  Citizens  of  all  classes  try  to  prevent 
crime  through  many  agencies.  Society  many  times 
abandons  the  released  prisoners.  So  men  like  Rollo 
McBride  established  'The  Parting  of  the  Ways 
Home'  at  Chicago  to  mercifully  and  sensibly  save 
the  ex-convict  from  re-committing  crime  to  obtain 
food  or  shelter. 

"Editors  and  teachers,  tax-payers  everywhere, 
will  be  glad  that  such  books  as  High's  'Prison 
Problems'  deal  with  the  prisoner  himself,  and  his 
keepers  and  plead  for  free  men  to  come  to  the  aid 
of  prison  slaves,  in  our  viciously  managed  penal  sys- 
tem, to  provide  them  outside  labor,  needed  music, 
education,  medical  attention — in  short  anything 
necessary  to  complete  their  reform." 

We  cannot  publish  the  names  of  those  who  have 
done  service  in  this  good  cause,  as  they  are  really 
too  numerous  to  mention  in  a  volume  of  this  size. 
The  cases  cited  have  been  typical  of  what  can  be 
done  when  there  is  a  will. 

It  is  with  unbounded  gratitude  that  we  send  forth 
the  second  edition.  The  book  has  grown  from  175 
pages  to  its  present  size. 

That  America  has  taken  mammoth   strides  for- 


252  Prison    Problems 

ward  since  this  venture  was  first  conceived,  is  only 
stating  a  truth  patent  to  the  merest  casual  observer. 
Several  states  have  abolished  the  contract  labor  sys- 
tem, prisoners  are  being  recognized  everywhere  as 
brothers,  and  as  human  beings.  Hope  is  being  writ- 
ten into  our  laws,  cruelties  are  being  abolished,  graft 
is  being  exposed,  barbarous  practices  are  being  pro- 
hibited ;  and  to  have  played  even  a  minor  part  in  this 
human  drama  of  uplift  and  reform,  is  reward  enough 
to  repay  us  all  for  the  effort  that  we  have  made. 


Prison    Problems  253 


OUR  GUARANTORS. 

The  second  edition  of  "Prison  Problems"  has  been 
made  possible  by  the  generosity  of  the  following 
who  have  each  given  it  their  generous  financial 
support :  O.  J.  Kloer,  345  W.  73rd  St.,  Chicago,  111. ; 
Harold  C.  Kessinger,  Aurora,  111. ;  Chas.  W.  Fergu- 
son, 640  Orchestra  Bldg.,  Chicago;  Benjamin 
Chapin,  237  E.  163rd  St.,  New  York  City ;  Fremont 
S.  Gibson,  Charles  City,  Iowa;  Thomas  Brooks 
Fletcher,  Marion,  Ohio ;  T.  J.  Tjernagel,  Story  City, 
Iowa ;  Father  P.  J.  MacCorry,  Wichita,  Kans. ; 
Grace  Hall  Riheldaffer,  838  Collins  Ave.,  Pitts- 
burgh, Pa. ;  Roy  James  Battis,  213  W.  61st  St.,  Chi- 
cago; Ewing  Herbert,  Hiawatha,  Kan.;  Leonora  M. 
Lake,  2354  Albion  Place,  St.  Louis,  Mo. ;  Ross 
Crane,  Pine  Lake,  Ind. ;  E.  A.  Wiggam,  North 
Vernon,  111. ;  R.  O.  Bowman,  511  Railway  Exchange, 
Milwaukee,  Wis. ;  W.  A.  McCormick,  Onekema, 
Mich. ;  Mrs.  Emma  Neal  Douglas,  1225  Peachtree 
Road,  Atlanta,  Ga. ;  Montaville  Flowers,  Monrovia, 
Cal.;  Rollo  H.  McBride,  25  E.  55th  St.,  Chicago; 
Alexander  M.  Lochwitzky,  1200  E.  55th  St.,  Chi- 
cago ;  J.  E.  Brockway,  Wabash  Bldg.,  Pittsburgh, 
Pa. ;  Prof.  Louis  Williams,  at  large. 


254  Prison    Problems 


A  CALL  FOR  VOLUNTEERS. 

At  the  tenth  annual  convention  of  the  Interna- 
tional Lyceum  Association,  held  at  Winona  Lake, 
Ind.,  September  2  to  11,  1912,  a  resolution  was 
unanimously  passed  pledging  the  1,000  members 
of  this,  the  first  free  forum  of  America,  to  work  for 
the  Abolition  of  Poverty  in  a  World  of  Plenty,  by 
studying  how  to  eliminate  waste. 

Crime  and  criminals  is  one  of  the  most  gigantic 
problems  before  the  world  today.  Mr.  Hugh  C. 
Weir,  in  the  World  Today  for  January,  1910,  states 
that  "Our  crimes  cost  us  $3,500,000  per  day,  and 
that  the  cost  of  crime  in  this  country  for  1909 
equalled  the  amount  realized  from  the  wheat  crop, 
the  coal  mined  and  the  wool,  aggregating  approxi- 
mately about  $1,373,000,000. 

Surely  the  task  is  great  enough  to  engage  the 
attention  of  a  hundred  such  organizations,  for  these 
few  pages  have  only  scratched  the  surface,  but  if 
they  will  cause  the  stream  of  lyceum  thought  to 
flow  with  a  greater  power  through  the  channels  of 
reform,  thereby  enlisting  the  co-operation  of  the 
scattered  forces  who  now  are  swatting  flies  while  the 
pesthouses  that  breed  the  germs  of  vice  and  crime 
are  not  only  winked  at,  but  actually  defended,  and 
sometimes  patronized  by  these  same  "fly  swat- 
ters," then  its  publication  will  have  been  worth 
while. 

The  International  Lyceum  Association  is  com- 
posed of  one  thousand  men  and  women  who  are 
engaged  in  the  great  work  of  spreading  the  gospel 


Prison  Problems  255 

of  good  cheer  in  song,  story,  literature,  oratory  and 
music.  We  believe  we  are  public  benefactors,  for 
back  of  the  lyceum  and  the  chautauqua  effort  is 
the  spirit  of  helpfulness ;  the  purposeful  message 
finds  here  its  greatest  advocates. 

In  the  World's  Work  for  September  are  to  be 
found  these  words:  "The  chautauqua  platforms 
were  used  by  the  reformers  and  agitators  for  many 
years  with  greater  effect  than  the  floor  of  the 
senate,  or  the  house,  or  than  national  conventions." 

We  believe  the  lyceum  and  chautauqua  are  the 
institutions  that  can  best  solve  the  great  prison 
problem  that  confronts  us  at  every  hand. 

The  closing  thought  of  this  little  volume  is, 
what  am  I  going  to  do  about  these  great  problems? 
Am  I,  as  I  read  this,  going  to  say  they  don't  effect 
me?  Will  I,  right  now,  pledge  myself  to  this  great 
work  of  bettering  this  world,  of  helping  some 
mother's  boy,  some  waif  of  the  streets,  some  beauti- 
ful daughter,  or  maybe  my  own  flesh  and  blood? 

The  one  thing  that  has  burned  into  my  soul  is 
that  no  man  liveth  unto  himself;  the  heavy  hand  of 
retribution  falls  with  greater  force  upon  the  inno- 
cent than  the  guilty.  There  is  one  thing  that  I  can 
do — send  $1.00  for  this  volume,  as  it  is  not  a  money- 
making  venture.  I  will  thus  enable  those  who 
have  given  their  time  and  money  to  make  possible 
this  venture  to  mail  four  copies  to  four  more 
editors,  ministers,  lecturers  and  legislators,  and 
thereby  make  this  an  endless  chain  to  prevent 
crime,  rather  than  a  spasmodic  effort  to  punish  a 
few  criminals,  for  I  see  this  is  the  beginning  and 
not  the  end. 


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